ADOPTION OF QUEENS BY ALIEN SPECIES. 295 



has the alpha and beta females. . . . That this species is a tem- 

 porary parasite on L. americanus is indicated by the fact that 

 near Colebrook, Conn., I found four small mixed colonies." 

 The four mixed colonies mentioned here are the only ones of which 

 there is any published account, but Professor Wheeler found 

 another such colony this last spring and has given me the fol- 

 lowing note which he made at the time. 



"Ellisville, Mass., April 21, 1910 Found a large mixed colony 

 of L. americanus and Acanthomyops latipes, both about equally 

 numerous and the latipes were no larger than the americanus. 

 The nest was under a stone and contained a number of larvae 

 so young that I could not tell to which species they belonged. 

 Both species took part in carrying the larvae to a place of safety 

 \vhen the stone was raised, but the latipes were much more active 

 in this pursuit than the americanus. The members of the two 

 colonies were on the most friendly terms and occupied the same 

 burrows." 



The above facts furnished very good reasons for trying latipes 

 queens with other species of Lasius and especially with L. ameri- 

 canus. On a field trip with Professor Wheeler in the Litchfield 

 Hills near Colebrook, Conn., we came across a very large colony 

 of L. latipes under a stone from which I obtained more than 75 

 winged females, all but 3 of which were beta females. These,, 

 and a number collected about two weeks later by Professor 

 Wheeler, part of them from a colony in the same locality and 

 part of them found crawling over the ground near Canton, Conn., 

 after they had descended from their nuptial flight, were the ones 

 used in the experiment. 



Altogether I tried 79 queens of L. latipes with 28 different 

 colonies of 8 different species of Lasius divided as follows: 14 

 colonies of L. americanus, 4 colonies of L. nearcticus, 4 colonies 

 of L. claviger, I colony of L. claviger var. subglaber, I colony of 

 L. brevicornis, 2 colonies of L. interjectus, I colony of L. umbratus 

 var. minutus and I other colony of L. latipes. Out of all these I 

 got but two clear cases of adoption in which the queen lived, 

 one of these being an alpha, the other a beta female. How r ever,. 

 not nearly all the deaths among the queens experimented w r ith 

 were due to the hostilities of the other ants, for the queens of 



