1906.] Wheeler, Founding of Colonies by Queen Ants. 9 1 



that in wild nests the consocians females make their appearance in 

 great numbers and before the summer brood of workers hatches. 

 This fact, taken in connection with the observation that colonies 

 of our other species of Formica, notably those of the fusca and 

 pallide-fulva groups, annually produce comparatively few but very 

 large queens, indicates that the stature of the female ant must 

 depend on the colonial food-supply and the manner of its distri- 

 bution to the larvae. While each of the large females has her gaster 

 well stored with adipose tissue carried over from larval life, voluminous 

 wing muscles that may be disintegrated after dealation to form ad- 

 ditional nutriment, and ovaries containing mature or nearly mature 

 eggs, the tiny female consocians is conspicuously lacking in all of these 

 particulars and is therefore compelled to associate with worker ants 

 in order to secure food not only for her prospective brood but for her 

 own frail body. 



The foregoing considerations satisfactorily account for the belated 

 fertility of the female consocians. In one of my colonies (Colony C, 

 vide supra p. 62), which was kept from August, 1904, till September, 

 1905, the ovaries of the queen did not enlarge and produce eggs till late 

 in the spring, although the ants were so abundantly supplied with 

 honey and hashed meal-worms that the gasters of the incerta workers 

 were full and tense throughout the fall and winter months. This be- 

 lated fertility under what seemed to be unusually favorable conditions 

 is in marked contrast with what may be observed in some other ants. 

 Thus Emery' found that the female Pheidole pallidula laid a great 

 number of eggs on the day following the nuptial flight, and that a 

 female of Liometopum microcephalum fertilized July i, laid some 20 

 eggs four days later. The above-cited observation of Jakob Huber 

 (p. 44) shows that the female Atta sexdens lays on the third day after 

 her nuptial flight. I have observed that the females of Pogonomyrmex 

 molefaciens will begin to lay within four days after fertilization. In all of 

 these cases the females are very large compared with their workers. It 

 is probable that great variations will be observed in the length'of time 

 that elapses in different species of ants between fecundation and laying. 

 These variations are, of course, easily explained as due to differences in 

 the amount of food stored up during larval life. If we regard the female 

 ant as the winged germ of the colony, we are led to look upon her 

 size as we look upon the size of the eggs in various animals. It is well 

 known that the more numerous the eggs produced by an organism, 

 the smaller they are apt to be and the greater or more numerous the 



' Sur rOrigine des Fourmili^res, loc. cit., p. 460 



