SOCIAL LIFE 



223 



wasps help the mother in feeding the younger grubs. The 

 societies of the African Belonogaster (Fig. 59) are larger, but 

 again all the daughters of a family community are fertile, 

 and parties of them, at intervals, leave the parent nest 

 together to found fresh societies, each of which consequently 

 possesses as many potential mothers as there are foundresses. 



Fig, 59. — Nest of Wasp (Belonogaster juttceus) , West Africa. Above 

 chambers with eggs, lower with larvae, at bottom closed cocoons. 

 Adult wasps, males and females, the latter attending and feeding the 

 larvae, both obtaining the larval salivary secretion. Drawn from a 

 photograph, E. Roubaud (Ann, Set. Nat. Zool. (10) i. 1916). 



In allied South American wasps occurs a differentiation 

 between the normal fertile females or queens and the smaller 

 females (workers), with reduced or vestigial ovaries which 

 if capable of producing eggs, lay only unfertilised ones 

 which may all be expected (see p. 140) to develop into 

 males. These American insects '' regularly form new 



