ADOPTION OF QUEENS BY ALIEN SPECIES. 303 



queens, one dealated queen of P. lucidus, and about 100 very 

 small workers of F. incerta and a number of cocoons. The 

 small number of lucidus workers and the comparatively large 

 number of females indicates that many of the workers were 

 probably out on a slavemaking raid at the time. 



I tried seven queens with colonies of F. incerta and four with 

 F. schaufussi. Two out of the seven were clear cases of adoption 

 in which the queens are still living. One of the others I think 

 was without doubt adopted but died later on from injuries re- 

 ceived in the first struggles. The two schaufussi colonies con- 

 sisted of very large individuals and each contained a queen. 

 They attacked the lucidus queens more fiercely than did the 

 incertas, and all four were finally killed, yet in both colonies I 

 saw at times a few of the workers licking the queens and I think 

 it would be possible if enough cases were tried, to secure adoption 

 with F. schaufussi, especially if the colonies did not contain 

 queens of their own. 



The behavior of the lucidus queens was like that of the ob- 

 scuriventris queens in that they did not at first attack the workers 

 but ran about in the nest avoiding them and trying to escape. 

 How r ever, when caught and held by the workers they were not 

 nearly so submissive as were the obscuriventris queens and when 

 forced to defend themselves they did so with such vigor and 

 persistence, pierceing the head or thorax of the unfortunate 

 workers with their long sickle-shaped mandibles so that a very 

 large number of the incertas or schaufussi workers \vere killed. 

 In one of the schaufussi colonies the lucidus queen killed every 

 one of the fifteen workers, leaving only the schaufussi queen. 

 Later on, however, the lucidus queen herself died. My results 

 agree with those of Wheeler mentioned above in that I did not 

 see a queen at any time pay the slightest attention to the brood, 

 her behavior being different in this respect from F. sanguinea, 

 which, as Wheeler has shown, kills off the workers, takes posses- 

 sion of the brood and frees the first callows from their pupal enve- 

 lopes. I will give a few notes from the two experiments in 

 which the queens were adopted and are still living. 



