go Binks 
VOL. XVII. JUNE, 1910. Now Sis 



COLONIES OF ANTS (LASIUS NEONIGER EMERY) IN- 
FESTED WITH LABOULBENIA FORMI- 
CARUM THAXTER. 
By WiLtit1Am Morton WHEELER. 
Harvard University. 
It appears, from the exhaustive researches of Prof. Roland 
Thaxter, the leading authority on the Laboulbeniacee, that only 
two species of these extraordinary ectoparasitic fungi are known 
to occur on ants. One of these species is Rickia wasmanni Cavara, 
found by Wasmann on Myrmica levinodis Nyl. at Linz on the 
Rhine; the other is Laboulbenia formicarum which Thaxter has 
taken at Cambridge, Mass. on Lasius niger L. var. americanus 
Emery and Formica subpolita Mayr var. neogagates Emery. Both 
species are described and beautifully figured in the second part of 
Thaxter’s “Contribution toward a Monograph of the Laboulbeni- 
acee,” Mem. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sci., Vol. XIII, No. VI, 1908, 
pp. 248 and 359, Pl. XXXIV., Figs. 1-13 and Pl. LVIII, Figs. 
14, 15. 
For some time I have been looking for Laboulbeniaceew on the 
ants which I have collected myself or received from correspond- 
ents, but it was not till very recently that I happened on any speci- 
mens of these fungi. April 20-24, while collecting insects on the 
seashore at Ellisville, Mass., a small settlement about twelve miles 
south of Plymouth and six miles north of Bournedale, I came upon 
two localities about a mile apart, in which nearly all the colonies 
of Lasius niger, var. neoniger were infested with what Professor 
Thaxter has kindly identified for me as the second of the two species 
of Laboulbeniacee mentioned above, namely Laboulbenia formi- 
carum. I first found a number of infested neoniger colonies a mile 
south of Ellisville in a small triangular area about a dozen yards in 
diameter and adjoining the beach. The soil of this area consists of 
a mixture of sand and humus and must be well within the reach of 
