ANT COMMUNITIES 



As a bit of by-play, we learn that when the ant larvae 

 lay close together a Metopina would reach over and 

 help itself from the portion of a neighbor, keeping the 

 while its rear attachment. Sometimes, when the ra- 

 tions were exhausted, the Dipteron would nip the tender 

 hide of a near-by ant larva till it squirmed with pain, 

 or it would tweak its own host. The suggested purpose 

 of this action was to attract the attention of the nursing 

 workers to the wriggling ant larva, and thus prompt 

 them to replenish the larder. 



Both kinds of larvae were cleansed by the nurse-ants, 

 who, if they were conscious of the presence of the para- 

 sites, made no discrimination between them and their 

 hosts. Indeed, as this species of ant is almost blind, it 

 seemed doubtful if they really could distinguish larval 

 host from larval guest, the latter possibly being taken 

 for a mere enlargement of the former's neck. 



One hesitates, however, to accept a theory which 

 implies such a lack of sensitiveness in the perceptive 

 organs of insects commonly so highly developed. How- 

 ever, as ants are notoriously devoted to the genuine 

 antennal "tone" of society, and as the Metopinae, from 

 the egg onward, are imbued with the true Pachycondyla 

 atmosphere, the distinction between the two larva? 

 might readily be lost in the common odor. Yet this 

 would equally account for their sparing the guest, even 

 though its nature were perceived. 



The next stage of development in the life history of 

 these strange yoke-fellows is equally interesting. When 

 the ant larva is mature, and nature stirs within it the 

 great unrest that precedes transformation, it sets its 

 spinning glands in motion, and begins to weave around 

 itself the brown cocoon, or closed silken sac, within 



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