190 



WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER. 



No males were present and future attempts to find them and other 

 colonies were unsuccessful. 1 



Two matters call for further discussion in connection with the 

 foregoing observations, the taxonomic affinities of Giganiiops de- 

 structor and its modus saltandi. The generally accepted view of 

 its taxonomic position can be traced to the various papers which 

 Forel has published from time to time on the classification of the 

 subfamily Formicinae (== Camponotinae Forel). In 1878 he placed 

 the genus Gigantiops between OpistJwpsis and Q^cophylla in his 

 first tribe of the subfamily. In his classification of 1893 he 

 omitted all mention of Gigantiops, though he enumerated the vari- 

 ous other genera of the subfamily. In 1912 he remodeled the 

 classification and considerably augmented the number of tribes, to 

 one of which, the QEcophyllini, he assigned the three genera 

 Gigantiops, MynnccorhyncJius, and (Ecophylla. The same arrange- 

 ment is preserved in his paper of 1917. I endeavored to show in 

 the same year that Mynnecorhynchus could not be retained among 

 the (Ecophyllini, but should probably constitute an independent 

 tribe, the Myrmecorhynchini. The characters of the (Ecophyllini, 

 according to Forel, are the following: gizzard long and narrow, 

 with straight calyx ; clypeal fossa more or less distinct from the 

 antennary fossa; antennae inserted a little behind the -frontal area, 

 but near the anterior ends of the frontal carinae. The gizzard 

 characters are not peculiar to this tribe, but recur also in the 

 Camponotini, and the remaining characters are decidedly weak, 

 since they depend on slight differences in the proportions of the 

 anterior portions of the head. When we compare Gigantiops with 

 CEcopliylla we are struck by the great differences in the structure 

 of the larva, pupa and adult and in habits. That the habits of the 

 two ants are totally different will be seen from a comparison of 

 the observations above recorded with what we know of Q^cophylla, 

 and its various subspecies and varieties, which are arboreal ants 

 inhabiting peculiar nests made of leaves and silk spun by their 

 larvae. Still it may be objected that such ethological peculiarities 

 have little significance, since we have species of Camponotus that 



i Dr. W. M. Mann, who has just returned with the Mulford Expedition 

 from Bolivia, informs me that he found Gigantiops nesting under stones in 

 the forests of the Rio Beni. 



