246 Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 
Among the staphylinids the so-called parasitic behavior ful- 
fills all the above conditions and should be termed parasitoidism. 
It is evident that the behavior in the family is a very recent 
derivative from true predatism and adds strength to the con- 
clusion that the family is primarily predacious. 
As Soctat Parasites. The large number of staphylinids 
consumption and regurgitated material, they also eat many eggs, 
larvae and wounded or isolated workers. The depredations of 
Lomechusa strumosa on the larvae Formica sanguinea led 
Wasman (se e Donisthorpe 13 :320-321) to assume that the pres- 
ence =y pseudogymes in a nest indicated that the colony was 
or had been parasitized by Lomechusa even if the beetles could 
not be found. The pseudogymes do not appear immediately in 
parasitized colonies and may never appear. It is thought that 
if the Lomechusa become so plentiful as to deplete the number 
of worker larvae, the workers will change the food of many 
of the sexed individuals in an attempt to produce more workers. 
The persecuted guests depend on the food they can steal and 
on the number of isolated or injured individuals they can way- 
lay and kill. The scent glands are well developed in these species 
and are effectively used in a number of cases, (see Wheeler 
10 :382, Beebe 19:459, and Donisthorpe 13:322). The tolerated 
guests, while they steal regurgitated food and other materials, 
feed on large amounts of living material such as mites and 
ant eggs. 
As PLANT Freepers. There are a few well founded reports 
which show that staphylinids on occasion do damage to plants. 
derived by the insect. It is to be noted that in both cases where 
specific damage has been recorded the insects belong to the sub- 
family Omaliniae but as yet the work is too meager to allow 
generalizations. 
The instances of plant injury caused by staphylinids are as 
follows: 
Chittenden (15:2): The beetles (A pocellus spaericolis Say) enter 
violets, = during part or all of their blooming period rest on the 
und, and cut holes in the flowers. A number of the beetles were 
isolated with carter! flowers so that there seems to be little doubt that the 
injury was caused by them. Scheerpeltz (27:1-9) reports that Saree 
ends isa faba is injurious to the blossoms o odendron 
hirsu eetles gnaw holes in the base of the ccvolle causing 
the rafiocesceace to wilt, turn brown and fall betore the fruit is formed. 
