NOTES OX A NEW GUEST-ANT, LBPTOTHORAX 
GLACIALIS, AND THE VARIETIES OF 
MYRMICA BRBVINODIS EAIERY. 
By William Morton Wheeler. 
In two former papers* I described the habits of Leptothorax 
emersoni, a small yellowish Alyrmicine ant, w^iich lives in inter- 
esting symbiotic relations with Myrmica rubra brevinodis, a 
larger brown species of the same subfamily. The Leptothorax 
occupies small cavities, communicating by means of tenuous 
galleries with the more spacious chambers and galleries of the 
Myrmica, and, while freely and intimately consorting with its host, 
is very careful to keep its own brood isolated. This small ant 
feeds, as I have shown, partly on the oleaginous secretion cover- 
ing the bodies of the Myrmica workers, whom it licks and sham- 
poos with comical assiduity, and partly on the liquid food which, 
after submitting to this treatment, these insects regurgitate. 
L. emersoni was first discovered among the Litchfield Hills of 
Connecticut, at altitudes varying from i,ooo to i,6oo feet, but sub- 
sequently I found it also at similar elevations in the Berkshire 
Hills of ^lassachusetts. More recently, Mrs. Annie Trumbull 
Slosson took a single winged female on the summit of Mt. Wash- 
ington. These facts indicate that the species belongs to the sub- 
boreal or alpine fauna, a conclusion which is confirmed by a study 
of the distribution of its host ant. As this host is extremely 
common in the Rocky Mountains and apparently also throughout 
British America, I fully expected to find the Leptothorax occur- 
ing over much of the same territory, but, although during the 
summer of 1903 I collected ants extensively in Colorado at alti- 
*The Compound and Mixed Nests of American Ants. Amer. Nat- 
ural. XXXV, 1901, pp. 431-415 ; and Ethological Observations on an 
American Ant (LeptotJiorax Emersoni Wheeler) Arch. f. Psych, u. 
Neurol. II, 1903, pp. 1-31, 1 Fig. 
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