C. sayi, has been recorded from Ohio to Kansas and Iowa and south to Texas and 
Florida. It is most common in the lower Mississippi Valley. C. castaneus (Latreille) 
occurs throughout the South but is most common in the Southeast. It nests in rotten 
Jogs and stumps or in the soil. Workers are yellowish to yellowish red and from 7 to 
10 mm long. C. tortuganus Emery occurs in the southern half of Florida and 
apparently nests in small colonies in rotting wood or in the soil beneath stones. It 
also occurs in houses where it may be a pest. C. mississippiensis M. R. Smith has 
been found nesting in the new growth of white ash branches in Mississippi. 
Galleries are apparently limited to | year’s growth. C. pylartes fraxinicola M. R. 
Smith nests in the dead branches of various hardwoods. It has been recorded from 
Mississippi. 
The Texas leafcutting ant, Affa texana (Buckley), is a serious pest of pine 
seedlings in eastern Texas and west-central Louisiana. It also defoliates and 
damages a wide variety of other plants, including orchard trees. Injury to pines is 
especially severe during the winter when there is a dearth of other green foliage. 
Texas leafcutting ants are rusty red. The head is strongly bilobed, the antennae 
are 11-segmented and without a well-defined club, the thorax bears three pairs of 
prominent spines on top with the anterior ones the largest, and the legs are 
extraordinarily long. The queen is about 18 mm long; workers, from 1.5 to 12 mm 
long. 
Nests of the Texas leafcutting ant are constructed in the ground, usually in well- 
drained sand or loamy soiis and commonly on slopes facing the south or west (95). 
The interior of the nest may reach a depth of 6 m. It may contain a thousand or more 
entrance holes. Nest areas are usually marked by many crescent-shaped mounds up 
to 12 to 35 cm high and 30 cm in diameter. Each mound surrounds an entrance hole 
(fig. 209). The nest consists of many cavities connected by narrow tunnels. There 
are vertical tunnels that extend to mound openings and lateral tunnels that lead 
outward, sometimes for 90 m or more. Above ground, sharply defined foraging 
trails sometimes extend hundreds of meters to the plants under attack. Ants move in 
procession along these trails, each carrying a fragment of leaf or other material to 
the nest. These fragments, which may be several times the size of the ants carrying 
them, are borne upright over the head like a parasol. 
7 
F-482849 
Figure 209.—Mounds of the Texas leafcutting ant, Atta 
texana. 
433 
