WANDERING, DRIVER OR VISITING ANTS. 15^ 



smaller sugar ants on the honey-dew insects, but 

 usually few in number. However the species Cam- 

 ponotns acncopilosus we have found in numbers 

 around frog hoppers. Some of these ants live 

 in a state of commensalism v^ith the cater- 

 pillars of the butterfly, Ogyris and of Jalmeniis. 



The integument of most Camponotids is soft and 

 flexible, and some of the workers become living 

 ''store-houses" for the reserve honey of which 

 they are so fond. These ants are found in the 

 hot interior of Australia, and they store these sweets 

 for the dry barren 'summer months, when the 

 country is baked and dry. The workers who forage 

 bring in the nectar, or the honeydew, and regurgi- 

 tate it to these "repletes," or store workers. The 

 bodies of the latter distend and form "honey jars." 

 They can only move very slowly, and generally 

 remain on the floor of the nest like tiny balloons 

 with a stalk attached. This honey is regurgitated 

 to the workers' by the repletes or store ants, 

 and so the colony is kept alive during the droughts. 



One of the honey ants, a Camponotid (Mclo- 

 phortis bagoti), is found in the interior of Australia. 

 Some of the large workers are set aside to act as 

 honey-storers, but their bodies are not so inflated 

 as those of Camponotus inflatus, hence they move 

 more readily. 



Professor Spencer, in ''Across Australia," thus 

 describes these honey ants : — 



"We came across the burrows of a honey ant 

 (Melophorus inflatus), an insect which we were 

 most anxious to see in its native habitat. There 



