AND ^'« 



JOURNAL OF VARIATION. 



Vol. XXXIV. No. 1. January 15th, 1922 



Myrmecophilous Notes for 1921. 



By HORACE DONISTHORPE, F.Z.S., F.E.S., etc. 

 The very long hot summer aud the drought of 1921, made it a very 

 poor year for Ants in England ; nearly all the species burying them- 

 selves much deeper than usual in the ground. The entire failure of 

 many species of Aphids during part of the summer also had a marked 

 effect upon the Foiuiicidac. My colleague Mr. Crawley tells me that 

 he was informed of several cases of ants entering dwellings this year, 

 where they had never done so before. I also heard of similar occur- 

 rences, and we are both agreed to attribute this to the lack of plant-lice. 

 Some ants, as we shall see later, had their marriage-flights quite a 

 month earlier than is usual with them. Bormica sangninea, which 

 always goes down for the winter sooner than our other species of 

 Formica, disappeared still earlier than usual this year. 



FORMICID^. 



Ponera piinctatissiina, Roger. — My friend, Mr. Philip Harwood, sent 

 several winged females and workers of this rare little ant to me to 

 name. He tells me he captured two ^ ? in fungi, and a winged $ 

 which he beat off a fungus on October 29th, in the Limpsfield Woods, 

 near Westerham. On November 5th be took twelve more specimens, 

 including winged ? J as well as ^ ^ , in the same locality, in a saw- 

 dust heap on which some large fungi were growing. I have only one 

 previous recoi'd from West Kent, when a winged J was swept by the 

 late Edward Saunders, in a wood at Bromley, far from any houses [Brit. 

 Ants, p. 72] . In Harwood's locality also, no houses are anywhere near, 

 nor is there a refuse heap, or anything to suggest the ants had been 

 introduced. 



Myr)necina (jraiirinicola, Latr. — In my last year's notes I recorded 

 that no winged females had been reared for the first time for four years 

 in my observation nest of this little species, which I have now had in 

 my possession for over eleven years. I suggested that the lighting, 

 which took place between tha ants in 1919, might have caused this, 

 and that as no fighting to speak of had occurred in 1920, winged females 

 might be produced again in 1921. Such has been the case, and large 

 numbers of winged $ $ were reared ; the first individuals putting in 

 an appearance on June 17th. One or two of these females are still 



