LIFE HISTORY. 39 



this does not refer to the dealated female i.e. one who has removed 

 or lost her wings after the marriage flight but to an apterous form 

 which has been born without wings, and whose thorax shows no 

 trace of wing-insertion.) 



14. The p-female is an aberrant form, occurring either with or 

 without the normal female, and characterized by excessive develop- 

 ment in the legs, and in the pilosity of the body. This form has not 

 been observed in Britain. 



15. The mermithogyne is a female with short wings due to the 

 presence of an internal worm of the genus Mermis. 



16. The microgyne is an unusually small female ; it may be 

 present in the same nest with normal females, and with some 

 species it is the only existing form of this sex. In either case it 

 may be even smaller than the largest workers. 



17. The pseudogyne is a wingless deformed-looking individual, 

 combining the thoracic characters of the female, with the size 



Fig. 48. Pseudogyne of Formica sanguined. Woking, 21.V.1913. 

 (Bondroit.) 



and gaster of the worker. The characters of these forms vary 

 greatly, no two specimens out of a considerable number being 

 exactly alike. The colour is often much lighter than in the normal 

 female ; the number of the ovarioles is much reduced, being some- 

 times less even than in the normal worker ; and macro- and micro- 

 pseudogynes occur. 



They have been said to be useless and cowardly ants, but I have 

 found that they will work, bite, spray acid, clean each other, and 

 tend the brood, as do the normal workers. 



Wasmann considers that they are brought about in Formica 

 colonies by the presence of beetles of the genera Lomechusa and 

 Atemeles, and Wheeler has suggested that they arise from starved 

 female larvae. From my own experience with pseudogynes, I do 

 not consider that either of these hypotheses will always, or alone, 

 account for their presence in a colony ; as though both these 

 stimuli may induce this state of things under certain circumstances, 

 under others, some other cause, about which we know nothing at 

 present, may produce the same result. 



18. The phthisogyne arises from a female larva under the same 

 conditions as the phthisaner. 



19. The worker (ergates) is an imperfectly developed female, 



