294 MAURICE COLE TANQUARY. 



above, give conclusive evidence of the fact that the queens of 

 F. obscuriventris are, at least in part, temporary parasites on 

 F. subsericea, and the fact that a number of partly dealated and 

 therefore probably fertilized queens had been retained in the 

 large colony may be taken as an indication that, once formed, the 

 colony may grow by budding as is the case with the large mound 

 ant, F. exsectoides, which has also been shown (Wheeler, 1906) 

 to be temporarily parasitic upon F. subsericea. 



LAS! US (ACANTHOMYOPS) LATIPES. 



This species not only possesses aberrant females but is peculiar 

 in the fact that it has two distinct forms of females as shown 

 in a paper by Wheeler and McClendon, "Dimorphic Queens in 

 an American Ant." These two queens have been designated 

 by them as alpha and beta, the beta being the more aberrant 

 but the more common, and up to the time of the appearance of 

 the above mentioned paper, the only one known. The alpha 

 queen, as shown by measurements given in that paper, is almost 

 exactly intermediate between the beta female and the normal 

 female of L. claviger. The two more probable of the four possible 

 hypotheses suggested therein in explanation of the occurrence 

 of these two forms are 







1. That the dimorphism may be regarded as the result of 

 hybridism between L. claviger and L. latipes. 



2. That it may be a case of true dimorphism in the female sex. 

 In a recent paper, "An Aberrant Lasius from Japan" 1 Wheeler, 



after stating that he had made many observations in the field 

 which showed that the queens of the following species of Lasius, 

 L. americanus, L. neoniger, L. nearcticus, L. brevicornis, L. 

 (Acanthomyops} claviger and L. (Acanthomyops} inter jectus are 

 able to establish their colonies independently, adds: "But I 

 have never seen any of the females of our umbratus forms (mixtus 

 var. aphidicola Walsh, subnmbratus Viereck, minutus Emery 

 and speculiventris Emery) in the act of founding their colonies 

 independently, and it is quite probable that they are temporary 

 parasites on the extremely common L. americanus. Equally 

 negative have been my observations upon L. (A.) latpies which 

 BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 1910. 



