ANT COMMUNITIES 



found with our Alle^hanv mound-builders is a Claviger 



*. - 



species (Tmesiphorus costatis) collected during the winter. 

 Doctor LeConte showed me (1876), in his rich collection 

 of Coleoptera, several of these taken at Bedford and Co- 

 lumbia, Pennsylvania, among which were Cedius ziegleri 

 LeConte, and others which he spoke of as "undescribed 

 specimens of Homolata and an unnamed species of 



Oxyopoda." These were 

 small brownish insects 

 with slight pubescence. 



The most interesting of 

 these ant -affinities (myr- 

 mecophiles) was his own 

 species, Xenodusa (Atame- 

 les) cava (Fig. 85). This 

 is a reddish-brown beetle, 

 about one-fifth of an inch 

 long, with tufts of yellow- 

 ish hair-like tubes on the 

 sides of the abdomen. 

 From these hairs exudes 



(By courtesy of American Museum of Natural History) Q, SWCCt 



Fig. 85 THE BEETLE XENODUSA which the ants feed, as 



CAVA LECONTE 



From a colony of Formica Schau- , . , i , ,1. 



fussi-inscrta. (After Wheeler) aphides, and It IS tniS 



fact which attracts ants 



to them or assures their toleration of them. Specimens 

 of this beetle were also taken bv or for LeConte in 



/ 



ant-nests of unknown species in Maryland, Illinois, and 

 Michigan. Among these was one still held in its host's 

 mandibles, as if taken while in flight from the disturbers 

 of its nest, and clung to with unrelaxed jaws in the 

 alcohol which killed it. Our American carpenter ants 



230 



