OBSERVATIONS ON THE PROGENY OF 

 VIRGIN ANTS. 



ADELE M. FIELDE. 



The value of the experimental work here presented lies mainly 

 in the complete protection of the virginity of the ant-mothers 

 during their whole lifetime, or from their pupa-stage to the close 

 of the experiments undertaken with them, and in the perfect 

 safeguarding of their eggs from contact with spermatozoa out- 

 side the body of the ant. 



At the present time, so far as is known to the writer, published 

 observations on the offspring of worker ants may be placed in 

 three categories. Those in the first category present a possibility 

 that a queen's eggs were inadvertently included in the nest with 

 the workers sequestered. When ants are transferred from a 

 natural to an artificial nest, it often happens that eggs, unobserved 

 at the time of sequestration, are discovered in the new nest within 

 a few days thereafter. Ants are tenacious of their charges, and 

 they sometimes conceal eggs or small larvae in their mouths, or 

 carry them adhering to their persons. In this way eggs may be 

 unwittingly transferred to the new abode and may afterward be 

 brought together in a pile or packet, the observer believing them 

 to be the product of the worker-ants when they are really the 

 issue of a queen in the old habitation. Unless the ants were 

 singly and carefully examined and freed from adherent eggs, or 

 unless a longer time than the twenty days ordinarily required for 

 incubation has elapsed since the segregation of the workers, 

 there is reason for suspecting that the eggs may have been de- 

 posited by other ants than the sequestered ones. 



In a second category may be included all those cases in which 

 larvae were intentionally introduced among the segregated ants. 

 Such larvae may not have reached the pupa-stage sooner than 

 the issue from eggs deposited in the new nest, and it is im- 

 possible to maintain that the older and the younger larvae are 

 always distinguishable. I have had, in my artificial nests, larvae 

 of Cremastogaster lineolata, scarcely larger than the eggs from 



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