HABITS AND BEHAVIOR OF THE CORN- 
FIELD ANT, LASIUS NIGER 
AMERICANUS 
The little brown ant notorious for its injuries to corn, and called 
by us, consequently, the corn-field ant, is not by any means limited to 
corn fields, but is abundant in all cultivated lands, in pastures and 
meadows, in dense forests, along hard pathways, and in the sandy soil 
of dry sunny roads. One sometimes finds it nesting in rotten wood 
or under bark, logs, or stones, and even opening up its underground 
burrows to the surface between the bricks of sidewalks and pavements. 
It is distributed "over the whole of North America, except the extreme 
southern and southwestern portions, from the tree line on the highest 
mountains to the sands of the shore."* Wheeler says that it is the 
most abundant of our ants, and hence of all our insects. 
Its homes and habits have been chiefly studied in corn fields, and 
there it forms rather extensive settlements, mainly centered in the hills 
of corn, several adjacent hills so occupied by it being connected by un- 
derground channels by way of which members of the same family may 
pass from hill to hill. This is partly, no doubt, because in corn fields it 
is usually in possession of plant-lice which live on the roots of corn and 
which contribute to the support of the ants the fluid surplus of their 
own food, but partly also because in the corn hills it is undisturbed by 
the cultivator, which is likely to tear up its nests if they are established 
between the rows. 
Contents of the Nests 
In the burrows of this ant one may find a rather mixed and varied 
population, consisting of the eggs, larvae, pupae, males, females, and 
workers of the ants themselves, together with the various species of 
root-lice harbored by them and certain kinds of mites which share its 
underground habitations on terms of mutual toleration if not of active 
friendship. In clover fields it is very likely to have in its nests many 
mealy-bugs {Pseudococcns trifolii Forbes) of a species which infests 
the roots of the clover plant, and these it treats as it does the root-lice 
of the corn plant, seizing them and carrying them away when its nest 
is disturbed, just as it hurries out of sight its own maggotlike larvae, 
its egglike pupae, and its minute, spherical white eggs. 
The contents of the nest are not precisely the same at all times of 
the year. In winter, for example, one finds in it no males or pupae of 
the ants, as a rule, but only workers and larvae, companion mites, and 
the eggs of root-lice. In some of the large winter nests one or more 
wingless queens or mother ants may be found, altho we have not been 
*An Annotated List of the Ants of New Jersey, by Wm. Morton Wheeler. Bull. Am. 
Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. I., p. 393. 
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