HOUSE ANTS: KINDS AND METHODS OF CONTROL. 7 
wherever climatic conditions permit and as a house and greenhouse 
pest over a much wider area. Its rdéle as an exterminator of native 
ants in the New Orleans district and in the island of Madeira has 
already been referred to. It is the only one of the imported tropical 
ants which causes any large monetary losses. The other species, 
as elsewhere noted, are for the most part merely annoying. 
Four other species of ants from tropical America have gained, 
through the agency of commerce, some foothold as house pests in the 
southern and eastern United States, and manage to live for con- 
siderable periods of time in northern heated houses.* 
One of these, Prenolepis fulva subspecies pubens, has been recorded 
from the District of Columbia, where it was found infesting one of 
the hothouses of the Department of Agriculture. It is believed to bea 
native of Brazil, but now occurs quite abundantly in Cuba and other 
West Indian Islands. It is still a comparatively rare house pest, how- 
ever, in temperate regions of North America, and, except in the 
Tropics, undoubtedly can not survive outside of heated buildings. 
NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN ANTS OF TEMPERATE REGIONS. 
Only one North American ant of temperate regions has become a 
true house dweller and pest. This distinction belongs to the little 
“thief ant,’? a native of our Northern and Eastern States. The 
workers of this ant are very small, and yellowish in color. They 
frequently, as do also Old-World species of the genus, inhabit the 
gallery walls of other and larger ants, where they are apparently 
unnoticed, and kill and eat the helpless larve and pupe of their ap- | 
parently unconscious hosts. The thief ant may, however, lead an in- 
dependent existence, and has been reported as a frequent pest in 
dwellings. It feeds on any animal matter, including dead insects, 
and has been recorded as attacking the sprouting kernels of Indian 
corn. This species can be readily distinguished from the little red, 
or Pharaoh’s, ant by its much lighter color and smaller size.2 This 
species is reported by C. H. Popenoe, of the Bureau of Entomology, 
United States Department of Agriculture, as nesting in houses very 
much as does the little red ant, colonies of the thief ant having been 
found, for example, in an envelope, and again in a box of photo- 
graphic dry plates. 
The carpenter ant * (fig. 5) should be considered in the list of house 
ants, although perhaps only accidentally, and under exceptional cir- 
cumstances, a house-infesting species. The carpenter ant of North 
America, a subspecies or variety of the European and Asiatic 
1 Prenolepis fulva Mayr subspecies pubens Forel, Neoponera villosa F. Smith, Cam- 
ponotus abdominalis Roger subspecies floridanus Buckley, and Pheidole flavens Roger sub- 
species floridanus Emery. 
2 Solenopsis molesta Say. 
*It is further distinguished by the possession of very rudimentary eyes, and a two- 
jointed instead of three-jointed “ club” to the antenne. 
4 Componotus herculeanus L., subspecies pennsylvanicus De G. 
