THE TEMPORARY SOCIAL PARASITES. 443 



corner of the nest. By 5.15 P. M. she had returned, mounted the pile 

 of cocoons and was licking the workers, who were submitting to this 

 treatment as if it were a matter of course. A few moments later she 

 fed one of the workers and then kept alternating between feeding and 

 caressing them with comical rapidity and perseverance. The colony 

 was watched till 7.45 P. M., but no hostilities were seen. July 22, 

 7 A. M.: The previous night had been cold and the female seemed to 

 have passed it hanging from the roof pane in a corner of the nest. 

 Later, as it grew warmer, she returned to the incerta and their brood, 

 caressed and fed the workers and took food from their lips. Only 

 once during the day was a worker seen to tug for a few moments at 

 one of her antennae. On the four following days (July 23 to 26) no 

 hostilities were observed. The consocians female had been definitively 

 adopted. 



Numerous observations in the field have convinced me that the 

 queen soon after her adoption lays eggs, the larvae hatching from which 

 are reared by the incerta workers. In this manner a mixed colony 

 arises. While the queen keeps on laying eggs and producing more 

 workers, the incerta gradually die of old age. Then, of course, a pure 

 colony remains, and the consocians workers have become sufficiently 

 numerous to enlarge and defend the nest and care for their queen and 

 successive broods of their own species. The purpose of adoption and 

 the signification of the small size and yellow color of the female are 

 apparent. The queen pursues the same tactics as some of the myrme- 

 cophilous beetles (Lomechusa, Atemclcs, etc.) described in a previous 

 chapter. She ingratiates herself with the workers by means of her 

 mimetic resemblance to them, by her conciliatory and passive demeanor 

 and by her neutral or soothing odor, and is thus able to exploit their 

 blind philoprogenitive instincts for her own advantage and that of her 

 offspring. Since she is thereby relieved of the necessity of nourishing 

 her young with substances elaborated from her own tissues, she can 

 be of diminutive stature, and this, in turn, represents a saving to her 

 parental colony, for it is thus enabled to rear on a given amount of 

 food a much greater number of queens than the macrogynous species. 

 As a matter of fact, the adult consocians colony produces an enormous 

 number of these dwarf females. 



One important problem in the parasitism of consocians remains to 

 be elucidated : What becomes of the mother queen of the incerta colony? 

 Several possible answers suggest themselves. The consocians queen 

 may succeed in obtaining adoption only in moribund and queenless 

 colonies, or if she enters colonies provided with a queen, this insect 

 may voluntarily forsake the nest, or she may be driven away or killed 



