CHAPTER XX. 



HONEY ANTS. 



" In general all these animals live from hand to mouth, and if there are some 

 which know how to economize, there are likewise those which do not ignore 

 the advantages of a savings bank." J. P. Van Beneden, Amer. Natur., 1874. 



A singular adaptation which has grown out of the relations of ants 

 to plants and to the plant-destroying Homoptera, is that of the honey- 

 ants. It has been shown that many ants are in the habit of collecting 

 nectar and honey-dew, storing it in their distensible crops till they 

 reach their nests and then distributing it by regurgitation to their larva? 

 and sister ants. This habit, as a rule, is most highly developed in the 

 Camponotinae and Dolichoderinae, which have a thin and pliable integu- 

 ment that permits a considerable expansion of the gastric walls. In 

 these ants the crop is often 

 so distended with the sac- 

 charine liquids above men- 

 tioned that the sclerites are 

 forced apart and appear as 

 dark spots or islands on the 

 tense intersegmental mem- 

 branes. Through these the 

 limpid ingluvial contents 

 maybe distinctly seen while 

 the other organs of the 

 gaster are forced up 

 against its walls. This 

 condition is often noticed 

 in foraging workers of our 

 common species of Campo- 

 notus, Lasius, Brachymyr- 

 \nex, Prenolepis and Ny- 

 anderia. In P. iniparis, 

 for example, a small black or brown ant, which is very widely dis- 

 tributed over temperate North America, the crop may be so greatly 

 distended with nectar or honey-dew (Fig. 213) that the insect, which 

 ordinarily has a quick and graceful gait, can only waddle along 

 with some difficulty. All of the workers of the Prenolepis colony 

 seem to be able to assume this replete condition, but they retain it only 



FIG. 213. Worker of Prenolepis 

 (Original.) a. Worker in ordinary condition; 

 /', replete. 



