1985] 
Pollock & Rissing — Veromessor 
127 
HIGH 
LOW 
> HIGH 
> LOW 
O HIGH 
“ LOW 
HIGH 
LOW 
HIGH 
LOW 
m 
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n 
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TTTTT1 
28 
JAN 
7 
17 
FEBRUARY 
27 
8 
18 
MARCH 
Figure I. Flight activity of five V. pergandei colonies at the Desert Botanical 
Garden, Phoenix, AZ, January — March 1984. “Low intensity” flights are those 
where <10 alates flew from the nest per min.; “high intensity” flights had ^10 alates 
fly per min. 
During observation of flights it was usually not possible to accu- 
rately sex individuals leaving the n£st. Nonetheless, two cases of 
unusual sex ratios were noted. One colony discovered at the Botani- 
cal Garden in February 1983 was obviously very young, as indicated 
by the single, small crater and nest entrance as well as the small size 
of its workers. This colony produced no alates during 1983 and 
produced only female alates during 1984. Additionally, nest Vp-1 
produced only males during the last 7 days of the mating season; an 
increasing proportion of these males were unable to fly correctly as 
the season progressed. 
Of eight adult colonies partially excavated to determine alate sex 
ratio, six exhibited a strong bias toward reproductive investment in 
females; the remaining two colonies produced only males. For those 
colonies with female alates, the average ratio of reproductive 
investment (mg females:mg males) was 9.7 (Table 1). 
All but five of the 61 V. pergandei queens dissected were insemi- 
nated suggesting females mate throughout the long flight season. 
The five uninseminated queens appear randomly distributed with 
respect to probable flight date, collection locale, and number of 
cofoundresses. 
