1906.] Wheeler, Founding of Colonies by Queen Anis. 4 1 



to the fact that an ant colony is started by a single isolated female. 

 This requires some qualification, since under very exceptional circum- 

 stances a couple of females from the same maternal nest may meet 

 after their marriage flight and together start a colony. During August, 



1904, I found two dealated females of Lasius brevicornis occupying a 

 small cavity under a clump of moss on a large boulder near Colebrook, 

 Connecticut. They had a few larvae and small cocoons and a couple 

 of tiny callow workers. The colony was transferred to an artificial 

 nest and kept for several days. Both females were seen to take part 

 in feeding and caring for the single packet of larvae and freeing the 

 remaining callows from their cocoons. Without doubt these twin fe- 

 males were sisters that had accidentally met under the same bit of moss 

 and had renewed the friendly relations in which they had lived before 

 taking their nuptial flight. This case is of considerable interest be- 

 cause, as a rule, even sister ants seem averse to such postnuptial 

 partnerships. This is indicated by some of the observations on For- 

 mica consocians recorded in the sequel. 



We wonder at the extraordinary endurance which enables the female 

 of our common ants to live so many months without food while she is 

 TQetabolizing her fat-body and functionless wing-muscles into eggs and 

 the salivar}^ secretion with which to feed her first brood of workers, but 

 the huge female of the American species of Atta (in the restricted 

 sense) not only accomplishes this difficult and complicated task, but 

 simultaneously cultivates a fungus garden as a means of providing 

 lierself and progeny with food. The founding of colonies by the 

 females of the larger Brazilian leaf-cutting ants has been studied by 

 Sampaio de Azevedo,' von Ihering,^ Goeldi,^ and Jakob Huber.* 



Sampaio, on digging up an Atta female ten days after the nuptial 

 flight, found her in a cavity with two small white masses, one con- 

 sisting of 50-60 eggs, the other of a filamentous substance which was 

 the young fungus garden though not recognized as such. Three and 

 one half months after the nuptial flight he excavated another nest 

 which had an opening to the surface of the soil. He found numerous 

 workers of three different sizes but all smaller than the corresponding 

 castes in adult colonies. They were already cutting leaves and had a 

 fungus garden about 30 cubic centimeters in volume. He estimated 



' Sauva ou Manhiiaira. Sao Paulo, 1894 



2 Die Anlage neuer Kolonien unci Pilzgarten bei Atta se.xdens. Zool. Anzeig., XXI, pp. 238-' 



245- . . . . , 



^ Forel. A., Einige Biologische Beobachtungen des Herm Prof. Dr. Goeldi an Ijrazilianischen 

 Ameisen. Biolog. Centralbl.. XXV, Marz, 1905, pp. 170-181. Goeldi, Beobachtungen iiber die 

 erste Anlage einer neuen Kolonie von Atta cephalotes. C. R. 6me Congr. internat. Zool. Berne, 



1905, pp. 457, 458; also Myrmecologische Mittheilung das Wachsen des Pilzgartens bei Atta cepha- 

 lotes betreffend, tbid.. pp. 508, 500. 



•• Ueber die Koloniengriindung bei Aatta sexdens. Biolog. Centralbl., XXV. 1905. pp. 600- 

 .619, 625-635, 26 figs. 



