Hiihlts. etc.. of the " Jl'alking-.Stick" {Aploptis inaycri) . 57 



thorax also continue to live and crawl about in the usual manner for several 

 days after the abdomen has been removed. 



I induced two male aplopi to pair with such a " stick- female " in a per- 

 fectly normal manner (text-fig. i and plate 3, fig. 5). The experiment was 

 ]jerformed as follows : It had been found, if a male was separated from a 

 normal female while mating with her, that they would remate after a short 

 time if placed in the dark. It had also been found by a previous unsuc- 

 cessful experiment that the abdomen should be from a female that was 

 mature, but that had not been mated with. This in mind, five males and ten 

 females were put into a dark-room, where after 12 minutes one of the males 

 had paired with a female. The pair was separated and the abdomen of the 

 female cut ofif at the joint between the first and second segments and fixed 



Fig. I. — Drawing of male .iplopus in full copulating attitude with the end of a female 

 abdomen fixed to a wire-legged stick. 



to the stick with wire legs as described above. All of the females were now 

 removed from the cage and the abdomen on the wire-legged stick was at- 

 tached to the side of the cage in a vertical position and placed in the dark- 

 room with four males. 



After 1.5 hours the " stick- female " had not been disturbed by any of 

 the males. It was now moved and placed in a horizontal position, as if hold- 

 ing to the gauze-wire top of the cage by its legs, with its bodv suspended, 

 the attitude of any insect while clinging to the under side of a horizontal sur- 

 face (fig. I ). In such a position the abdomen was mated with in less than an 

 hour. The male in this instance was not the same individual that had pre- 

 viously mated with the entire female. He was in a perfectly normal copulat- 

 ing attitude, his organ of intromission being inserted between the oviscapt 

 and the raised end of the female abdomen, as is shown in figure i. Figure 

 5, plate 3, is a photograph of the pair, although here the male has withdrawn 

 his intromissive organ on account of the disturbance caused by shifting the 

 cage into a favorable light for photographing. This male was finally, by the 

 movements of the cage, made to leave the " stick-female." 



