1919] Wheeler — Two Gynandromorphous Ants 7 



genera of Camponotvs the workers are polymorphic, i. e. form a 

 more or less evenly graded series from maximal to minimal in- 

 dividuals. To my knowledge this is among ants the only known 

 gynandromorph that exhibits an unmistakable combination of 

 male and soldier characters. In other cases the male characters 

 are combined either with the worker or with the female. Even 

 the lateral gynandromorph of Camponotiis ligniperda, described 

 and figured by Klapalek/ represented a combination of the male 

 and worker minor. 



The dinergatandromorph of C. albocinctus seems to me to be 

 very significant in connection with the previously known thirty 

 Formicid gynandromorphs and the Lasius latipes described above.^ 

 It is evident that the male characters may be combined not only 

 with the female as in the gynandromorphs of other animals, but 

 also with the soldier and worker. And although the latter are 

 abortive females, they nevertheless behave in combination with 

 the male like entities quite as distinct and independent as the 

 fertile female. This suggests that the worker and soldier are not 

 products of nutrition but are germinally predetermined. In other 

 words, it would seem that in ants with male, female and worker 

 castes, we must postulate three, in species with a soldier caste, 

 four different kinds of eggs. This view is also supported by the 

 following considerations: first, Bugnion and Miss Thompson have 

 shown that in termites, which have developed castes surprisingly 

 like those of ants, the soldiers, workers and sexual forms cdn be 

 recognized as distinct on hatching from the egg; second, embryo- 

 logical study has shown that the insect egg is the most precociously 

 specialized of all animal ova, so specialized, in fact, that not only 

 the anterior and posterior poles but also the dorsal and ventral and 

 right and left sides of the organism that is to arise from it are mor- 

 phologically predetermined even before the extrusion of the polar 

 bodies; and third, artificial castration has shown that operations 

 on the primary sexual characters of young insect larvae fail to dis- 

 turb the development of the secondary sexual characters and 

 instincts. 



1 Obojetnik Camponotus ligniperdus Latr. Sitzb. Bohin. Ges. Wiss., 1896, 4 pp., 2 figs.; 

 Wheeler, Some New Gynandromorphus Ants, with a Review of the Previously Recorded Cases. 

 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 19, 1913. p. 675, Fig. 11. 



2 Reviews of the known cases are given in my papers: Some New Gynandromorphous Ants, 

 etc., loco citato, pp. 653-683, 11 figs, and Gynandiomorphous Ants Described during the Decade 

 1903-1913. Amer. Natural, 48, 1914, pp. 49-56. 



