Got the connected_components to finally work using a vecS for the vertex list in the adjacency list. In this case, the component map is simply a vector of ints (which is the type of UndirectedGraph::vextex_descriptor (=graph_traits<FeatureGraph>::vertex_descriptor) and probably UndirectedGraph::vertices_size_type). To use listS, I was told on the Boost mailing list: >> If you truly need listS, you will need to create a vertex index >> map, fill it in before you create the property map, and pass it to the >> vector_property_map constructor (and as a type argument to that class). It may be feasible with a component map like shared_array_property_map< graph_traits<FeatureGraph>::vertex_descriptor, property_map<FeatureGraph, vertex_index_t>::const_type > components(num_vertices(g), get(vertex_index, g));