15 
olfactory sense, through which the instinct of animosity to strangers 
is aroused, is so acute that ants will attack even their older sisters if 
they have been reared without contact with others of like age.? 
It is much better policy, from the standpoint of the social economy 
of the ants, for a given area to be occupied by one large colony than 
by many small ones, and with many of the ants this mstinct of hos- 
tility is supplemented by that of retaining a part of the young females 
in the nest. This enables the community to be expanded to the 
greatest extent possible and avoids the waste of unnecessary competi- 
tion and conflict. 
The more amiable disposition of the keleps has enabled them to 
reach different and somewhat more democratic solutions of their 
social problems. They take better care of their young females, and 
do not find it necessary to make war upon their neighbors of the same 
species. 
Like other carnivorous animals, the keleps become cannibals when 
driven by hunger, but in normal conditions of Indian agriculture an 
abundance of keleps in a locality would tend to increase the area 
planted to cotton, so that their existence would not be subject to the 
usual laws of competition in the struggle for existence. 
Barring accidents which may compel a change of residence, an ant 
colony remains indefinitely in the same place, but the kelep organi- 
zation 1s decidedly more mobile. Colonies can change their locations 
readily and may do so with promptness when a more desirable spot 
has been found. One of the ends gained by the kelep in moving 
would be to leave behind parasites, with which their nests sometimes 
become infested.” 
It is a familar fact in the study of plants that some grow in 
clusters and others are solitary. If a seed produces only a single 
a@¥Wielde, A. M., Biological Bulletin, 7: 227. In some of the ants studied by 
Miss Fielde the aversion to strangers is said to extend even to a “manifest 
preference” of the females for males from the same colony. It should not be 
taken for granted, however, that the laying of eggs by queens captured before 
the mating concourse proves a previous mating inside the nest, nor that all the 
males which may be found in a nest originated in it. 
4The habit of frequent moving might also explain the apparent absence 
among the keleps of the guests or messmates which have attached themselves 
to many of the true ants. In Guatemala the kelep nests usually harbor a snail 
or two, a small diplopod of the order Merocheta, a small creamy-white thysa- 
nuran, and a worm which infests the bone yard or collection of dismembered 
skeletons of their prey, which are stored in a special underground chamber. 
A few specimens of a hymenopterous parasite identified by Doctor Ashmead 
as Isomaralia coronata Westwood have emerged from some of the captive colo- 
nies during the journey to the United States, and even, in two instances, after 
they had arrived in Washington. 
The worst enemy of the keleps, however, is a mite, which has become ex- 
tremely numerous in some of the cages, especially those inhabited by small and 
demoralized colonies. 
