PSYCHE 



VOL. XXVI DECEMBER. 1919 No. 6 



THE PHORESY OF ANTHEROPHAGUS.i 



By William Morton Wheeler. 



August 16, 1919, while collecting Hymenoptera near Colebrook, 

 in northwestern Connecticut, I observed a worker humble-bee 

 {Bomhvs vagans) behaving in an erratic manner on the flowers of 

 a golden-rod. The insect was standing with straightened legs on 

 the tips of its tarsi and repeatedly attempting to insert its pro- 

 boscis into the flowers, but did not succeed because a small red 

 beetle was firmly attached by its mandibles to the tip of the right 

 maxilla and the tongue. The beetle, which proved to be a female 

 of the Cryptophagid Antherophagiis ochraceu.s Mels., did not release 

 its hold in the cyanide jar, so that I am able to show it in its original 

 position in the accompanying figure (Fig. 1). I failed to find 

 any record of such behavior in our American Antherophagi {ochra- 

 cens, convexulus and suturalis), but a perusal of the accounts of 

 the closely allied European species (nigricorms, silaceus and pallens) 

 yields a satisfactory explanation of the peculiar activities described 

 above. 



In 1896 Lesne called attention to a number of small insects 

 that habitually ride on larger insects. To this phenomenon he 

 applied the term "phoresy" and showed that it is distinguished 

 from ectoparasitism by the fact that the portee does not feed on 

 the porter and eventually dismounts and has no further relations 

 with the latter. The following year (1897) Charles Janet studied 

 the known cases of phoresy somewhat more comprehensively, ex- 

 panded the concept and distinguished no less than six different 

 categories : 



(1) Cases like that of the small flies of the genus Limosina which 

 ride on the dung-beetle, Ateuchus, and represent phoresy in its 

 typical form as conceived by Lesne. 



' Contributions from the Entomological Laboratory of the Bussey Institution, Harvard 

 University, No. 162. 



