2QO ENTOMOLOGY 



These wingless males and females are termed ergatoid, on account of 

 their resemblance to workers. 



As to how these various forms are produced, very little is known. 

 Probably, as among bees, workers and queens are produced from the 

 same kind of eggs, which have been fertilized, and the differences 

 between worker and queen and between workers themselves may be due 

 to the quality and quantity of the food that is supplied to the larvae 

 by their nurses. As in bees, the parthenogenetic eggs laid by abnormal 

 workers may produce males, as Forel, Lubbock and Miss Fielde have 

 found; or they may produce normal workers, as Reichenbach and Mrs. 

 A. B. Comstock have found to be the case in Lasius niger. Wheeler 

 points out the possibility of the inheritance of worker characters through 

 the male offspring of workers. 



Larvae. The numerous eggs laid by one or more queens are taken 

 in charge by the young workers, through whose assiduous care the help- 

 less larvae are carried to maturity. The nurses feed the larvae from their 

 own mouths, clean the larvae, and carry them from one place to another 

 in order to secure the optimum conditions of temperature, moisture, etc. 

 When a nest is broken open, the workers seize the larvae and pupae and 

 hurry into some dark place. The pupa is either naked or else enclosed 

 in a cocoon, spun by the larva. 



Nests. The species of the tropical genus Eciton do not make nests 

 but occupy temporarily any suitable retreat which they may happen to 

 find in the course of their wanderings. Ants in general know how to 

 utilize all sorts of existing cavities as nests; they make use of crevices 

 in rocks and under stones or bark, the holes made by bark-beetles, hollow 

 stems or roots, plant-galls, fruits, etc. The extraordinary " ant-plants" 

 have already received special consideration. 



Very many ants excavate their nests in the ground ; after a rain these 

 ants are especially industrious in the improvement of the nest, pressing 

 the wet earth into the walls of the galleries and adding probably a se- 

 creted fluid which acts as a cement; stones and sticks are often worked 

 into the walls of a nest and the mounds of ants are frequently fashioned 

 about blades of grass or growing herbage of whatever kind. The sub- 

 terranean galleries are often complex labyrinths; frequently there are 

 long underground passages extending out in all directions, sometimes 

 to aphid-infested roots of plants or, as in the case of the leaf-cutting 

 ants of the tropics, to trees which are destined to be attacked; special 

 chambers are set apart for the storage of food and others for eggs, larvae 

 or pupae. 



