CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY OF THE 

 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY AT HARVARD COLLEGE. 

 E. L. MARK, DIRECTOR. — No. 179. 



SOME STAGES IN THE SPERMATOGENESIS OF THE 



HONEY BEE. 



By E. L. Mark axd Manton Copeland. 



Presented May 9, 190G. Recaved May 1, 1906. 



In 1903 F. Meves published a short account of spermatogenesis in 

 the honey bee in which it was held that the process was remarkably 

 unlike that of other animals, and simulated in an interesting way the 

 maturation of the female sexual products. 



As is well known, an important parallelism between the formation of 

 polar cells in the maturing egg and the last two cell divisions lead- 

 ing to the formation of spermatozoa was established for Ascaris by 

 0. Hertwig, and has since been shown to be a general condition of matu- 

 ration throughout the animal kingdom. But while in the sexual cells 

 of the female maturation results in the formation of one functional and 

 three (or two) non-functional elements, in the male the usual outcome 

 is four elements, the spermatozoa, all of which are functional. 



In the honey bee Meves showed that the maturation divisions of 

 the primary spermatocytes resulted, as in the case of the primary ovo- 

 cyte generally, in the production of a single functional cell, inasmuch 

 as there are produced from the primary spermatocyte in succession two 

 " Richtungskorper." However, this fundamental difference was noted : 

 whereas in the formation of polar cells during the maturation of the 

 primary ovocyte there are produced two nucleated " Richtungskor- 

 per," in the spermatogenesis of the honey bee only the second of the 

 corresponding bodies is nucleated, the first one being composed exclu- 

 sively of cytoplasm. 



At the time I\Ieves published these observations we had already 

 begun the study of the germinal cells in the male honey bee, and hav- 

 ing now arrived at somewhat different conclusions from those set forth 

 by him, will give here a preliminary account of our results thus far, 

 the intention being to publish later a more detailed and comprehensive 

 paper on the subject. 



