168 
Psyche 
[Vol. 92 
side; one minor held a larva in its mandibles. Except for the queen, 
which quickly rushed off into the surrounding litter, none of the 
ants made any move during my disturbances, even when I carefully 
picked up one of the fragments in forceps for close examination. 
Additional workers (including a major, a minor carrying a larva, 
and three instances of adult transport of minors) were taken from a 
2.5 m route extending along the ground and over leaf litter to the 
nest site. The ants had apparently been in the process of emigrating 
to the site of the leaf fragments. Unfortunately I was unable to trace 
the emigration route back to its origin because of the scarcity of ants 
along it. Indeed, during over an hour of observations on this route, 
the frequency of ants declined until none were seen during the last 
thirty minutes. Altogether I took 47 minors, two majors, seven 
males, one dealate queen and a small number of brood. Presuming 
the emigration had been at or very near completion, this would 
represent nearly the complete colony. 
The captive ants were maintained as described for the A. notabilis 
colony. As in A. notabilis , the workers congregated together on the 
exposed surface with the brood massed together among them and 
with the majors usually at the periphery of the brood area. The 
location of the cluster often shifted. 
Diet 
Acanthomyrmex notabilis. A. notabilis apparently has a broad 
diet, collecting fruits and seeds, capturing tiny invertebrate prey, 
scavenging for dead invertebrates and probably accepting a variety 
of sugary materials as well. 
Only one returning A. notabilis forager carried food, this a tiny 
(0.5 mm) fragment of a small isopod. In captivity minors promptly 
carried small arthropod corpses to the nest. There the corpses were 
surrounded by minors, which licked them and gradually tore them 
into pieces. Majors were never observed to feed on animal material (or 
any other food except by regurgitation). 
There is some evidence for predation in this species. In the field 
four live 2-3 mm immature centipedes were placed before foraging 
ants; these were picked up and carried directly to the nest. A small 
entomobryid collemolan, which I held before a forager with fine 
forceps, was also seized and carried off. In the captive colony a tiny 
