36 
keleps does not prove, of course, a common descent from a social 
ancestor any more than does the agreement of the ants with the ter- 
mites, or that of the bumblebees with the wasps. There are still 
many solitary bees among which a colony organization might grow 
up; also solitary wasps, some of which associate gregariously; and, 
finally, there are solitary wasps with wingless females which have 
undoubted relationships with the drivers and the keleps. The ant 
organization can hardly be looked upon as a further specialization 
from this series. The breeding habits prove conclusively that the 
history of the ants involves an independent specialization, probably 
from some nonsocial ancestry, but certainly not from one which had 
attained any such organization as the keleps or the drivers, or any 
such tendency to winglessness in the female sex as shown in the 
Mutillidee and other related groups of parasitic wasps. 
The feeding of the larvee with captured insects by ants of the fam- 
ily Myrmicide has been cited by Professor Wheeler as evidence in 
support of a suggestion of Professor Emery that this family of ants 
was derived from the Poneride.” But even if this correspondence be 
accepted as a true indication of relationship it can scarcely mean more 
than that the ancestors of the ants were predaceous insects like the 
keleps and the drivers. The latter groups have kept the predaceous 
food habits, but among the ants there is still to be found the even 
more primitive instincts of an annual emergence of both sexes from 
the nest and the founding of new colonies by solitary females. 
On the other hand, it must be admitted that the habits of the genus 
Stigmatomma, as described by Professor Wheeler, offer many more 
points of resemblance to those of the kelep than do those of Poner: 
and the Texan genera Pachycondyla and Leptogenys studied by 
Professor Wheeler. The larva of Stigmatomma, which “ does not 
conform to the Ponerine type,” is much more similar to that of the 
kelep, as are also the eggs. 
«There still exists an ecological (or biological, in the German sense) con- 
nection between the Ponerinz and the Mymicin, as I have lately ascertained. 
Since describing the peculiar method employed by the Texas Ponerinze in feed- 
ing their larve, I have found that one of our New England Myrmicine ants, 
Stenamma (Aphenogaster) fulviwn Rog., subsp. aquia Buckl., var. piceum 
Mmery—an ant very common under stones and in rotten logs along the edges 
ot woods—has essentially the same method of feeding its young. My attention 
was first called to the fact in an artificial nest belonging to Miss Adele M. 
Fielde, at Woods Holl, Mass. One afternoon Miss Fielde left a lot of queen 
pup and laryvee of Cremastogaster lineolata within reach of the Stenamma 
colony. By the following morning the Stenammas had carried these into their 
uest, cut off their heads and abdomens, and had distributed the pieces freely 
wmong the larvee, which could be seen singly and in groups of from two to five 
eagerly feeding on the juices in the same manner as Ponerine larve.’”’-—Wheeler, 
W. M., 1901, Biological Bulletin, 2 : 65. 
