STUDIES ON FREE COLONIES OF 
CRYPTO CERUS TEXAN US SANTSCHI 
(HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE) 
By Wm. S. Creighton 1 
For a number of years the writer has hoped to present habit data 
derived from a study of free colonies of Cryptocerus texanus. The 
need for such a study is apparent if papers previously published in 
this journal are consulted. Most of the reactions which Dr. R. E. 
Gregg and I discussed in our 1954 publication (1) were those of 
captive colonies of texanus installed in Janet or Field nests. The 
limitations of this type of study are shown by the fact that, after 
more than a year, during which time some of the colonies had been 
tested with a wide range of food, it was not even suspected that 
texanus subsists on pollen. In 1963 (2) after other inconclusive 
feeding experiments, the writer abandoned the artificial nests and 
installed colonies in sealed terraria that permitted limited foraging. 
The responses of the foragers, which at first seemed to be entirely 
without point, were finally recognized as activities which resulted in 
the collection of pollen grains. While their was no reason to suppose 
that this pollen gathering was an abnormal response, there was good 
reason to suspect that the process might show interesting new features 
when carried on by a free colony. Some of these are discussed in this 
paper. The period during which the free colonies were observed 
extended from late October to the middle of April. 
It may be objected that the term “free colony” as used here is a 
misnomer. The writer has yet to find an undisturbed nest of texanus 
so situated as to permit easy and continuous observation. The ants 
are not found in young trees, presumably because these are avoided 
by the beetles whose abandoned larval burrows are used as nest pas- 
sages by texanus. But an undisturbed nest of texanus in a dead limb 
well up in the crown of a large tree is very nearly inaccessible. And, 
even if one grants the unlikely possibility that the presence of the 
colony could be spotted from the ground, there would be no practical 
way to take advantage of the discovery. Since what was needed for 
the present study were nests at or below eye-level and since it appears 
that these are not to be had, a compromise was inevitable. When 
1 Box 1421, La Feria, Texas. 
Published with a Grant-in-Aid of Research from the Society of the Sigma 
Xi. 
Manuscript received by the editor February 27 , 1967 . 
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