THE PROGRESSIVE ODOR OF ANTS. I I 



progressive odor that the male is best fitted for his distinctive 

 office in the ant world. 



IV. THE PROGRESSIVE ODOR OF QUEEN ANTS. 



The change in the inherent, transmissible, progressive odor in 

 a line of queens is probably slow and cumulative, but that such 

 a change occurs is evidenced by the behavior of any segregated 

 group of Stcnaunna fithnui workers, a species in which the 

 queens generally remain in the colony in which they are pro- 

 duced. When workers from such a colony are segregated from 

 the pupa-stage upward, it becomes difficult to find, in the wild 

 nest, any queen that these segregated workers will accept as their 

 own. In this species, I have reared worker-offspring from queens 

 that were sequestered from all males except those of their own 

 colony, 1 and these workers willingly associated with their worker- 

 cousins. That the change of odor is but slight in a single gene- 

 ration is also shown by the fact that the worker-daughters of a 

 queen, after having been segregated from their pupa-stage upward, 

 and with no criterion of odor save that of their own bodies, will 

 affiliate with their queen-mother at a first meeting, though they 

 always examine her with exceeding care before rendering com- 

 plete homage. 



The gradual change in odor, through the introduction of the 

 male element, from generation to generation, may be crudely re- 

 presented by the use of letters as symbols of the odor of queens 

 of the same species and variety. 



The Roman numerals at the left denote successive generations 

 of mated queens. 



The letter a is used as a symbol of the odor characterizing two 

 sister queens ; the other letters as symbols of the odor inherited 

 from the paternal grandmother. 



I. a, I. a, 



II. rt + 3, II. a-\-l, 



HI. a + b + c, III. a + l+m, 



IV. a+b + c + d, IV. a + l+m + n, 



V. a + b -f c -f d-\- e, V. a -+ I -f m + + o, 

 etc. etc. 



1 " Notes on an Ant," Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia, December, 1902, p. 605. 



