288 MAURICE COLE TANQUARY. 



1.50 P.M. The same. 



2 50 P.M. The queen is dead and dismembered. 



Aug. 16 8.15 A.M. I place in another queen. She runs about in the nest 

 avoiding at first the workers who threaten her. After about four minutes 

 when she is resting on the sponge (not with the brood), a worker comes up 

 and begins licking her at once and continues doing so for more than five 

 minutes. 



8.45 AM. The queen is in the corner of the nest feigning death. I thought 

 she was dead at first; several workers standing around her. 



9.00 A.M. She gets up and goes over to the brood; after a few minutes a worker 

 drags her away. 



9.30 A.M. Three workers holding her. 



12.00 M. They are still attacking her. 



3.00 P.M. She is being stretched out by four workers. 



6.00 P.M. The same. 

 Aug. 17 7.30 A.M. Three workers are holding her. One leg partly gone. 



5.30 P.M. The queen is dead and dismembered. 



On August 19 I placed in another queen. She received the same treatment and 

 was killed by August 24. On August 25 I placed in another. This one fared a 

 little better and lived until September 8. 



This colony, it will be seen, killed in succession five queens of 

 Aphtznogaster tennesseensis between August 6 and September 8. 

 That there is a tendency toward adoption is seen in the fact that 

 a number of the workers often licked the queen just as they 

 would their own, while others were attacking her. It seems as 

 though there is something about the queen that is attractive to 

 the workers while at the same time the odor of a different species 

 antagonizes them. In nature the specific odor is probably not 

 so distinct by the time the tennesseensis queen enters a fulva 

 nest since she will have been out of the parent nest and running 

 about on the ground for some little time. In this and in other 

 adoption experiments only a few ants attacked a queen at once> 

 usually not more than two or three, and very seldom more than 

 five or six, even when the colony was a very large one. It would 

 seem as though the other ants realized that the intruder was 

 being taken care of. 



The variety picea seemed to be more hostile to the tennes- 

 seensis queen than aqitia, but even here a tendency toward 

 adoption is shown, as may be seen from the treatment accorded 

 one of the queens in an experiment from which I take a few notes. 

 This colony contained seventeen workers and a small pile of 

 larvae of Aphcenogaster picea and were in a small two-chambered 

 Santschi nest made of glass and plaster of Paris. 



