13 
ants. If colonies were established by solitary fecundated females, as 
among the true ants, some of the nests would have shown examples of 
the undersized workers, of which the first brood raised by the queen 
ant is regularly composed. 
It is now a well-established fact that every ant colony is founded by a single 
fertilized female, or queen. The insect loses her wings and buries herself in a 
small cavity in the soil or wood that is to forni the future nest. After eutering 
the cavity she usually closes the opening so that she is completely shut off from 
the outside world. She deposits, at the expiration of a certain time, a number of 
eggs, and when these hatch as larvee she does not go abroad in quest or food, 
but feeds her offspring with substances regurgitated from her own body. These 
substances are ultimately derived from the fat body, a store of nutriment accu- 
mulated during her life in the maternal nest, which she forsook to take the 
nuptial flight. Of course, the insect must derive her own nourishment from the 
same internal source, and as, in all ants, the development of the young extends 
over a considerable period of time, it follows that the laryie are of necessity 
poorly fed, and after pupation hatched as dwarf workers (microergates). 
The number, too, of these diminutive creatures is limited, so that the whole col- 
ony in this incipient stage is a family consisting only of the huge mother and a 
few dwarf offspring.@ 
Workers much smaller than any found in nature were raised in 
some of the captive colonies of keleps, doubtless as a result of un- 
favorable conditions or lack of the normal amount of animal food. 
Nests with diminutive workers would not furnish proof positive, 
therefore, that the kelep, any more than the honeybee, ever founds col- 
onies by means of isolated queens. Disease, parasites, or starvation 
might be expected to bring about in nature, as in captivity, a condi- 
tion which gives the kelep colony a superficial resemblance to a 
recently established community of true ants. 
The finding of a colony of a few small workers of Odontomachus 
clarus has been reported by Professor Wheeler as evidence that the 
Poneride agree with other ants in the method of founding colonies. 
Other authorities on the classification of Hymenoptera recognize 
Odontomachus as constituting a family distinct from the Poneride 
by structural characters. Nevertheless, the similarity of habits be- 
tween Odontomachus and Pachycordyla is so great that a difference 
in social organization seems very improbable. The fact that the 
Odontomachus nest found by Professor Wheeler was in a cavity in a 
stone may be the explanation of its unprosperous condition.? 
a Wheeler, W. M., 1902, Science, n. s., vol. 15, p. 768. 
b Wheeler, W. M., Science, n. s., vol. 15, p. 769: “In a former paper I main- 
tained that the Ponerine: perhaps constitute an exception to the general method 
of establishing colonies, but I have recently found in a small cavity in a stone a 
fertile dealated queen of Odontomachus clarus surrounded by five diminutive 
workers. While it is certainly remarkable that one does not find similar 
incipient colonies of other Ponerine, this observation makes it probable never- 
theless that the ants of this family agree with the Componotinz, Myrmicinie, 
and Dolichoderinze in their methods of founding colonies.” 
