512 Phylum Arthropoda 



more than a year without sunshine and with no regular alternation of 

 light and dark, but with many days and nights of complete darkness 

 followed by brief lighting with a search light, or with other intense 

 electric light. Various frames erected in the enclosure served for feeding 

 and other experiments. Water was supplied both by basal tunnel under 

 the mound and by occasional showers over the mound surface to bring out 

 the building reactions that follow when the surface is wet after long 

 dry periods in which material is accumulated; the activities after rain 

 being essentially a turning of the roof upside down by carrying the inner 

 part onto the outer part through turrets built up over the surface. 



To simulate the sunshine in which ants may bask, a suspended source 

 of dark heat called out masses of ants to bask in a small local area of 

 warm darkness. As a cheap source of dark heat the flat metal heaters 

 used for poultry proved efficient. 



In a room of nearly uniform temperature and general darkness, ants 

 thus existed without sunlight and carried on, both day and night, as they 

 do normally in warm nights out of doors. 



Reference 

 For the feeding of ants see note on p. 49. 



Family 



BETHYLIDAE 



METHODS OF BREEDING PERISIEROLA ANGULATA, A 

 COCOON PARASITE OF THE ORIENTAL FRUIT MOTH 



J. C. Schread, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station 



THE Australian bethylid parasite, Perisierola angulata, has been 

 reared for two consecutive seasons at the Connecticut Agricultural 

 Experiment Station. It is a cocoon parasite of some promise, having 

 been recovered from succeeding fruit moth generations subsequent to 

 field colonization during the first season of handling. Because it pre- 

 sents several discouraging features in artificial breeding as a result 

 of its peculiar habits (the females require a prohibitive amount of in- 

 dividual handling and attention), only a limited number may be reared 

 in any one season with the present technique employed in breeding. 



Three-dram homeopathic vials are used as rearing containers. The 

 bottom of the vial is removed and replaced with % of a straight-sided 

 wine cork into which a small nail with an impaled raisin is inserted. 

 The opposite end of the vial is fitted with finely woven absorbent cloth 

 forced into the neck of the vial and held in place by an 8 x 14 x 2 mm. 

 washer. 



Host material used for mass production of the parasite is confined to 



