1 62 \V. M. WHEELER AND J. F. McCLENDON. 



And there is no strong evidence to show that this condition did 

 not exist in the ancestral ants, for the Dorylinae are hardly in the 

 direct line of Formicid descent, and the Ponerinse, though very 

 primitive, still show the differentiation into winged queens and 

 wingless workers in some of their most generalized genera (Cera- 

 pac/iys, Syspliincta, Proceratiuin, etc.). 



3. That the most natural way of accounting for the wingless 

 workers is through loss of the organs of flight in one of the two 

 winged female forms, is also indicated by the phenomena of 

 ergatomorphism among male ants. It is known that in a few 

 sporadic species belonging to several genera the males are wing- 

 less and have assumed a worker-like form, especially in the de- 

 velopment of the thorax. These species are, Auergates atratulus 

 (Schenck '52), Formicoxenus nitiduliis (Adlerz '84), Cardiocon- 

 dyla Stambuloffii (Forel '92), Poncra punctatissinia (Emery '95^) 

 and P. ergatandria (Forel '93). This same reduction of the 

 wines is shown in a more or less advanced condition in some 



O 



male Mutillidae. All these cases are most naturally explained 

 by loss of the organs of flight, and we are justified in adopting 

 the same explanation to account for the wingless condition of the 

 workers. Our view of the matter, therefore, would differ from 

 Emery's in assuming that in the ancestors of the ants all three 

 forms, workers, queens and males, were alike winged, and that 

 the workers lost their wings either suddenly in accordance with 

 Headley's principle, or concomitantly with the atrophy of the 

 ovaries and the assumption of the other worker characters. 

 Thus it would be the workers that have lost their wings and the 

 queens have not reacquired, but retained these organs which 

 came to them as the common heritage of all the Pterygote insects. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

 Adlerz, G. 



'84 Myrmecologiska Studier. I Formicoxenus nitidulus Nyl. Oefversigt. af 

 Kongl. Vetensk.-Akad. Foerhandl., 1884, No. 8, pp. 43-64, Taf. XXVII., 

 XXVIII. 



Bateson, W. 



'94 Materials for the Study of Variation treated with Special Regard to Discon- 

 tinuity in the Origin of Species. London, Macmillan & Co., 1894. 



Emery, C. 



'93 Beitraege zur Kenntnis der Nordamerikanischen Ameisenfauna. Zool. 

 Jahrb. Abth. f. Syst. , Bd. VII., 1893, pp. 633-682, Taf. XXII. 



