tomyrmex, therefore, must have lived on 

 the other side of the world, probably 

 between 1 5 and 20 million years ago. 



When Hispaniola formed, 65 mil- 

 lion years ago, it did not occu- 

 py its present position in the Caribbean. 

 It arose between North and South 

 America, roughly where Central 

 America is today, as part of a group of 

 islands that included modern-day Cu- 

 ba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. For the 

 first 5 million years of its existence, His- 

 paniola was close enough to what is now 

 southern Mexico that organisms could 

 readily travel there from the mainland. 

 About 60 million years ago, however, 

 the island began drifting eastward out 

 to sea, stranding its immigrant species. 

 Some of those species eventually be- 

 came extinct — such as the forests of al- 

 garrobo trees that gave rise to Domini- 

 can amber. Other species became the 

 founding organisms for diverse species 

 that evolved and radiated into a num- 

 ber of previously unoccupied niches. 



When the piece of amber containing 

 "my" ant queen and her mealybug were 

 chiseled out of a wall in a Dominican 

 mine, they began a new journey, one 

 that would help fill in part of the histo- 

 ry of an ancient genus of ants. After the 

 amber was polished and examined, in- 

 vestigators realized that the specimens 

 inside displayed exactly the same kind 

 of rare behavior I had described among 

 modern-day ants. The queen had been 

 frozen in the amber clutching a mealy- 

 bug in her mandibles [sec photomicrograph 

 on page 16]. When I got the chance to 

 study the fossil, I was thrilled to realize 

 that the queen represented a new spe- 

 cies with an intriguing form and struc- 

 ture that would help me understand the 

 evolution of the genus. I named the new 

 species Acropyga glaesaria (glaesaria 

 means "of amber" in Latin). 



Although A. glaesaria went extinct 

 long ago, the genus Acropyga still exists 

 today. And like their Miocene ances- 

 tors, modern-day Acropyga still engage 

 in trophophoresy. Species in the genus 

 live mostly in the warm, wet places 

 around the world that hug the equa- 

 tor — though there are a few excep- 



4 "Day 



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