148 
GENERAL NOTES. 
CHRYSOMELID LARV IN ANTS’ NESTS. 
Mr. T. D. A. Cockerell has, in the July (1891) number of the Entomolo- 
gists Monthly Magazine, an article on two case-bearing Chrysomelid 
larve from Colorado, one of them being found in the nests of an ant, 
“apparently Formica fusca,” the other occuring under rocks. Dr. Ham- 
ilton, to whom specimens of the former larva were submitted by Mr. 
Cockerell, declares them as “very probably the larva of Coscinoptera 
vittigera,” and is inclined to think that their occurrence among ants is 
merely accidental. It seems that both Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Cockerell 
have overlooked a note which we published in the American Naturalist 
for 1882, p. 508, where we first called attention to the myrmecophilous 
habit ofthe larva of C. dominicana. We had then received numerous 
specimens of the cases found in Wisconsin in a large ants’ nest. Sub- 
sequently the same cases were found by Mr. Pergande, at Washington, 
D. C., among the colonies of Camponotus melleus, and last year we 
received from Mr. H. G. Hubbard another large lot of the same cases, 
found at Helena, Mont., in the hills of Formica ebscuripes. In all these 
instances we succeeded in breeding the imago, which proved to be C. 
dominicana, and from our experience it seems safe to say that the oc- 
currence among ants of this Chrysomelid larva is not accidental, but 
rather normal. This does not imply, however, that larve do not feed 
on old leaves remote from ants’ nests, since in our account of the trans- 
formations of the species (Sixth Rep. Ins. Mo., p. 127) we have shown 
that it does. Whether or not Mr. Cockerell’s species from Colorado is 
C. vittigera it is not possible to tell without having bred theimago. His 
short description of the case and the larva agrees very well with C. 
dominicana as described and figured in our Sixth Missouri Report. 
Still it is possible that the cases and larve of the two species resemble 
each other so closely that they can be distinguished only upon careful 
comparison. 
The larve of two European species of Clythra are known to live with 
ants, and some years ago we received from Mr. H. K. Morrison cases 
of a Chrysomelid found in an ant’s nest in Arizona. These evidently 
belong to the Clythrini, but are specifically if not generically different 
from Coscinoptera dominicana. From these records, few as they are 
in comparison with the large number of species the habits of which are 
still unknown, it is safe to say that at least some species of the tribe 
Clythrini must be considered as myrmecophilous in the larva state. 
That in the case-bearing Chrysomelid larve the case serves as a pro- 
tection from enemies there can be do doubt; but if Mr. Cockerell says 
that the case-making habit in Coscinoptera may have been acquired as 
a protection against the bite of the ants, he forgets that many other 
soft-bodied and quite unprotected insects live peacefully in company 
