Dec, 1909.] Wheeler: Observations on European Ants. 173 



viicrogyna. dakotcnsis, cxscctoidcs, etc.) to be temporary parasites on 

 F. inccrta and snbscricca; second, because Forel and Wasmann had 

 recorded the occurrence of a few small, mixed colonies of fnsca with 

 allies of riifa (F. prafciisis. fntiicicola, cxsccta and prcssilabris) ; and 

 third, because, notwithstanding the abundance of F. riifa in many 

 parts of Europe, no one had ever seen one of its females in the act 

 of establishing- a colony independently. 



After finding F. truncicola to be, as I had predicted, a temporary 

 parasite on fusca, Wasmann undertook a number of experiments with 

 a view to determining the behavior of riifa towards this species.* 

 He introduced recently fecundated queens of rufa into artificial nests 

 containing fnsca workers and pupje, with results that led him to infer 

 that the adoption of the inifa queen by the fnsca workers is accom- 

 plished with greater difficulty than that of the truncicola queen, and 

 that the rufa queen often behaves like the sanguinca queen under the 

 same circumstances, i. c, kills a number of the fnsca and collects and 

 guards their pupre till the callow workers hatch and adopt her. 



While I was in Switzerland I did not have the facilities for per- 

 forming experiments like those of Wasmann, but I was able to make 

 the three following observations, which show that, under natural 

 conditions, F. rnfa is, in all probability, a typical temporary parasite 

 like consocians and fruncicola, and does not establish her colonies 

 after the manner first observed by myself in the American forms of 

 sanguinca-^ and subsequently confirmed for the European type of this 

 species by Viehmeyer:}; and Wasmann. § 



I. July 20 I found just below the lateral moraine of the Turtmann 

 Glacier, at an altitude of about 2,000 m., a large nest of F. fusca under 

 a small pile of flat stones. This nest contained several hundred fusca 

 workers, several pup?e and larvae, but no queen of this species. In 

 the midst of the colony, however, there was a fine rufa queen, at once 

 recognized by her size, red thorax and glabrous gaster. She had 



* Weitere Beitrage zum sozialen Parasitismus und der Sklaverei bei den 

 Ameisen, Biol. Centralbl, XXVIII, 1908. 



t On the Founding of Colonies by Queen-ants, with Special Reference to 

 the Parasitic and Slave-making Species, Bull. Aincr. Mus. Nat. Hist., XXII, 

 1906, pp. .33-105. 



:j: Zur Koloniegriindung der parasitischen Ameisen, Biol. Centralbl., igoS, 

 pp. 18-32. 



§ Weitere Beitrage, etc., loco citato. 



