380 WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER * 



on the wasp's prey, nor have I found their larvae in the nests. 

 The wasp usually introduces her prey into the burrow so ex- 

 peditiously and then buries it so completely that these parasites 

 must encounter great difficulties in gaining access to it. 



After the ant has been dragged a few inches down the bur- 

 row, the wasp proceeds to cut off its wings. Usually she does 

 this very neatly, although the stubs she leaves attached to the 

 body are a little longer than they are in queen ants that have 

 dealated themselves. More rarely the wasp simply gnaws off 

 the tips or apical halves of the wings. That this deflation is 

 accomplished before the ant is carried to the lower portion of 

 the nest is shown by the fact that while excavating the nest 

 one always finds the detached wings only a few inches below 

 the surface and some distance from the bodies of the stored ants. 



Although I excavated a considerable number of nests with the 

 aid of Messrs. W. M. Mann and F. X. Williams, I have had some 

 difficulty is ascertaining the precise method employed by the 

 Aphilanthops in rearing its young. By piecing together the 

 observations made on different nests I have reached the con- 

 viction that the wasp secures several queen ants, usually five 

 to seven, often belonging to more than one species, and stores 

 them in two or three cells. Sometimes only a single ant is 

 deposited in a cell, more frequently two, rarely three. No eggs 

 were to be found on such stored individuals, but in each of two 

 nests, a young larva was found in a small cell devouring a single 

 ant, which had been cut in two at the petiole. The mother 

 Aphilanthops was sitting in the burrow in each of these nests 

 and in one of them there was a paralyzed ant in a chamber 

 separated from the one in which the larva was feeding. Several 

 older nests were excavated in which there was a single adult 

 larva spinning its cocoon and surrounded by fragments of three 

 or four queen ants. These conditions seem to me to prove that 

 the Aphilanthops feeds her single larva from a store of several 

 ants deposited in several cells. The egg is evidently laid on an 

 isolated ant which the mother wasp cuts in two in order that 

 the larva may gain access to the nutritious contents of the thorax 

 and gaster. Then the other ants are taken from storage and 

 brought to the larva one by one as they are required, till all 

 are consumed and the larva is ready to pupate. As the wasps 

 were found in the nests even after the larvae had pupated and 



