56 ILLINOIS BIOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS [176 



DISCUSSION 



In the following discussion I shall compare briefly the results obtained 

 in the present investigations with those obtained by other authors and give 

 interpretations of some of the facts observed. In the comparisons I shall 

 confine myself almost exclusively to the more recent literature. The lack 

 of proper methods of investigation makes the reports of the older writers 

 of little value except as historical documents. 



BIOLOGY 



Altho the behavior of the Gordiacea has attracted the attention of all 

 workers who have obtained living material, the observations have for the 

 most part been fragmentary and have yielded little that is of scientific 

 value. Even the present report does not pretend to be more than the mere 

 beginning of a systematic study of the behavior of certain species during 

 the different stages of their life cycle. 



Occurrence and behavior of adults 



Various workers have reported that among the Gordiacea there is a 

 predominance of males over females. The most recent statement to that 

 effect was made by Meyer (1913), who reported that he collected 201 

 specimens and found only 6 to be females. Von Linstow (1891) found 

 that the proportion of males to females was 7:3. More recently Miihldorf 

 (1914) stated that in his collections, which were perhaps larger than any 

 previous collections made, he failed to find any consistent difference in the 

 number of males and females. 



With the additional information presented in this paper it is possible 

 to explain the previous observations and to show that the differences 

 observed were apparent and not real. 



Von Linstow gives a table of the specimens collected by him, including 

 both free living and parasitic forms. His conclusion is based on the entire 

 collection which included 31 females and 74 males, and does not hold true 

 either for the free living forms or the parasitic forms when considered 

 separately. In case of the parasitic forms he actually found three males 

 and five females, or a predominance of females. 



Camerano in the following year published several tables showing the 

 parasites obtained from Blaps mucronata in the neighborhood of Turin. 

 These tables show that he also found no predominance of males over 

 females. 



In the parasitic forms obtained during the present investigations I have 

 been unable to find any difference in the number of specimens of the two 

 sexes. 



