MYRMICA. 107 



distributed species on the Continent than in England, and is found 

 with many different hosts, occurring in fact with nearly all the 

 larger ants 21 . 



MYRMICA Latreille. 



(ptpMt, ant.) 

 Type : Formica rubra L. (Latr., 1810). 



The genus Myrmica is common to the Palaearctic and Nearctic 

 Regions, and comprises robust and intelligent ants, which do not 

 fear the light, nor the open air. They nest under stones, in banks 

 and fallen boughs, etc., and also build earth mounds. They are 

 not very quick in their movements, but are deliberate and sure, 

 going out alone on foraging expeditions, also however following 

 each other in files. When these ants carry their fellows, the one 

 that is carried is held by the external edge of one of the mandibles 

 and lies over the back of her carrier with the ventral surface upper- 

 most, the legs and antennae being folded up. They eagerly attend 

 plant-lice out of doors, but also keep a number of species in their 

 nests, and sometimes build special earthen chambers for them ; 

 the sweet excreta of these insects forming the principal part of their 

 food. They are the winter hosts of beetles of the genus Atemeles, 

 which they feed, obtaining also a sweet secretion from them. 



These ants possess the power of stridulating. The sound is pro- 

 duced by rubbing the post-petiole against the first gastric segment, 

 which is furnished with a file composed of very fine transverse 

 ridges. 



Tlie marriage flight takes place in the autumn, and it commences 

 in the air, but as soon as the couples are united they fall to the 

 ground together, because the female is unable to carry the male 

 when on the wing. Copulation only occupies a very short time 

 and one female may be mated with three different males in as 

 many minutes. Much has been written about the marriage flights 

 of these species Dalglish noticed these ants swarming and dropping 

 like rain on to a greenhouse ; Crawley was on one occasion in a 

 hammock in his garden reading, and thought at first it had begun 

 to rain, by the pattering on the leaves of the trees, caused by 

 Myrmica males and females falling down together ; Bond described 

 a combat of ants which occurred near Hornsey in the summer of 

 1828 ; this however was clearly a marriage flight of Myrmica, as 

 he says that they met in mid-air and always fell to the ground in 

 pairs, the one being black and the other red the former were of 

 course the males and the latter the females. 



The winged sexes sometimes occur in such numbers as to give 

 the impression of a cloud of smoke in the air, and it was probably a 

 swarm of these ants which caused the people of Coburg in 1866 

 to think that the tower of the church of St. Maurice was on fire. 



