INSECT SOCIOLOGY 



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to threaten to wipe out some important American wild 

 or domesticated food plant or flower. In several such 

 cases entomologists have visited the native country of 

 the insect pest, found its natural parasites and brought 

 them to this country, where they have been released 

 among their hosts and have soon increased to such 

 numbers as to be a remedy for the pest. 



Thus we find among insects brilliant examples of a 

 number of phases of social relationships which are 



Honey-ants about three times natural size, taken from ground about the 

 roots of pine trees 



familiar to us in human life. These relationships are 

 accompanied, in the insects, by a good deal of struc- 

 tural modification of individuals for the sake of accom- 

 plishing special functions which is a phenomenon that 

 occurs in but slight degree among human beings. 

 We devise and use different tools and machines to equip 

 different individuals for different kinds of work. But 

 the results are similar in the two groups. 



Some of the phases of insect sociology have been 

 developed and specialized far beyond the condition 

 attained in human life. The communal life of the 



