CARNIVOROUS BUTTERFLIES — CLARK 507 



unmannerly Avay right over the orifice it hardly gave the ants a 

 chance. When an ant did get there first it generally shared by re- 

 gurgitation the good thing with a fellow, and he was inclined to 

 think on one or two occasions with the less gracious lycainid. But 

 they showed no ill feeling if the latter got there first. 



Later he saw another larva feeding on the droplet, but not on the 

 membracids. But in an examination of the frass of others he found 

 undoubted insect remains. 



He noted that there is a suggestion of a monkey face in the pupa 

 of this butterlly, but he thinks that, at a little distance off, the effect 

 is much more of the bird-dropping order, in a different way from 

 that of the larva, for the colors are those of brown paper and putty 

 nicely blended. 



Triclema lamias 



At Moor Plantation, about 4 miles west of Ibadan, Southern 

 Nigeria, Mr. Charles O. Farquharson came upon two lycsenid larvae 

 which were slowly devouring a happy family of coccids {Lecanium 

 \Sasseta\ farquharsoni) on a plant of liiibncaria iiiaxwia. They 

 were dull green, onisciform, with just a hint of a white line along the 

 edge of the mantle and a slightly lighter mid-dorsal line. There was 

 a gland, but Mr. Farquharson could not see any sign of tubercles. 



Mr. Lamborn had previously found that the larvae of the allied 

 T. lucret'dis are associated with coccid-tending ants, but did not 

 think that they were carnivorous; he saw the larvaj eating the dark 

 green cortex of a soft plant, but at some later stage they may, as 

 suggested by Professor Poulton, have attacked the ant-tended coccids 

 he found in tunnels in the same stems. 



SUMMARY 



The food habits of all the butterflies with carnivorous caterpillars 

 represent merely an extension of the intimate association with ants 

 which is eminently characteristic of the family to which they belong, 

 for they all feed either upon the young of ants, upon material 

 regurgitated by ants, or upon ant-tended insects. 



In the Lycaeninae the great majority of the species are vegeta- 

 rians, but with marked carnivorous leanings as evidenced by the 

 common display of cannibalism. In the genus Lyccena^ L. arion in 

 the last larval stage turns upon the ants which up to that time have 

 protected it in return for the honey it supplied them, and devours 

 their young. The larva3 of L. alcon in the last stage similarly live 

 on the juices of ant grubs. The ant-eating habit characteristic of the 

 last stages of the caterpillars of Lycce-na arion and L. alcon passes 

 into the ant-eating habit of Liphyra, which gives no honey in return. 



