INSECT A : HYMENOPTERA 



417 



In the nests of other ants many other inmates are known. 

 In fact, it is said that as many as 1500 different kinds of 

 Arthropods have been found in ants' nests, about 65 of 

 these being different British beetles. In all these cases 

 the intruders, by living with the ants, get a protected 

 and sheltered home and a plentiful supply of food, and 

 yet but few of them seem to do anything in return, 

 except in the case of the Aphides, who supply honey-dew, 

 and the beetles mentioned above which have the secreting 

 hairs. On the other hand many of the latter are assassins, 

 at times killing and eating the larvae of the ants, and some- 

 times even the ants themselves. 



FIG. 315. Atemeles soliciting Food from a Worker Ant. 

 (After Wasmann, from Wheeler. ) 



Two of these murderous beetles are Atemeles and 

 Lomechnsa, both belonging to the Staphylinidae and so 

 allied to the cock-tail beetle (p. 252). These beetles are 

 welcomed by the ants, who constantly lick the tufts of 

 yellow hairs on their bodies, caressing them with their 

 antennae, and regurgitating food for them, in spite of which 

 the beetles will eat the ant larvae. The beetle larvae, on 

 the other hand, are nursed and fed by the ants exactly as 

 if they were their own, and this nursing " obsession " on the 

 part of the workers results, strangely enough, in the salvation 

 of the ant colony from the beetles, for the beetle larvae die 

 under the treatment to which they are subjected. The ant 

 larvae need to be buried before pupation, and unearthed 

 again a few days later, but to the beetle grubs such a process 

 means destruction ; so by the very fact that they make no 

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