Wheeler, Some Remarks on Temporary Social Parasitism. 643 



When found the colony comprised a truncicola queen and 

 about a hundred fusca workers. The queen and fourteen of the 

 I'H sea were confined in an artificial nest. She commenced laying 

 during May, 1901, and by June a few tnun-icola workers had been 

 reared by the fusca. Later some pupae of the latter species were 

 added for the purpose of strengthening the colony. During the 

 year following (1902) a number of truncicola workers were reared 

 from eggs laid by the queen and by August the colony contained 

 about fifty fusca and as many truncicola. In 1903 the queen began 

 to lay as early as March, and, during the early part of the summer 

 the ftixcn bore the brunt of nursing the brood. Fifty to sixty 

 tniiicicola workers were reared. Then the fusca workers began to 

 die off till all had perished by August 25, so that necessarily a 

 pure truucicola colony remained. During 1904 cocoons of sauyuinea, 

 rufibarbix and fusca were placed in the nest, but the truncicola 

 workers adopted the fiiscn workers only, so that the colony again 

 became a mixture of truncicola and fusca. The adoption of fuxcn 

 and the rejection of the other species is very plausibly attributed 

 by Wasmann to habit association: fusca being the species with 

 whose aid the truncicola colony was started and reared and there- 

 fore a familiar species from the outset. 



Now I venture to maintain that no impartial reader will for 

 a moment admit that these observations, either alone or taken in 

 connection with the other cases of what Wasmann has for years 

 been in the habit of calling ,,abnormal" or ,,accidental" mixed 

 colonies, are sufficient to accredit him with the independent dis- 

 covery of temporary social parasitism as a general and regular 

 phenomenon among certain Formicidae. There is absolutely nothing 

 in the behavior of this tmncicola-fusca colony that could not have 

 been predicted of any mixed colony of similar composition, that 

 is, consisting of a fertile female of one and several workers of 

 another species. It is perfectly clear that, under the circumstances, 

 the fusca must some time have died off and left a pure truncicola 

 colony. Moreover, the observations prove next to nothing in re- 

 gard to the phylogeny of slavery, since a colony of ants that 

 appropriates pupae dumped into its nest, is not exhibiting true 

 dulotic instincts even when the young are allowed to develop and 

 thereby give rise to a mixed colony. In the case under discussion 

 it could readily be predicted that the fusca pupae would stand a much 

 greater chance of survival than the pupae oi sanguined and rufibarhix. 



I am far from denying that the above observations on a single 

 trundcola-fusca colony may have suggested to Wasmann the con- 

 ception of temporary social parasitism, but they assuredly do not 

 establish it as a regular occurrence. In order to do this many 

 more observations on wild colonies were needed and these were 



41* 



