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Psyche 
[Vol. 92 
minutes, and often within a half hour virtually all the ants had 
recongregated at a single site often different from the original site. 
During four such cases of worker dispersal I recorded one instance 
in which a major carried a mass of eggs and microlarvae, and three 
of a major carrying larvae. When majors held immatures in an 
undisturbed colony they gripped them gently. During disruptions, 
however, majors squeezed the brood severely, so that the larvae 
were pinched. Whether this ever resulted in brood death is not 
known. 
If a shaded nest site was made available to the ants after exposing 
the current site to a moderately strong light, transfer of workers and 
brood to that site usually began within an hour. The ants which 
originally held immatures in place were generally not those that 
carried them to the new site; rather, most or perhaps all of the 
carrying was accomplished by those often relatively few individuals 
that had previously been to the new site. If an immature was held by 
a worker, the approaching ant would antennate the immature, then 
grasp it in her mandibles and pull gently, her antennae sometimes 
palpating the other worker. The worker usually released its grip 
within one to 15 seconds, at which point the first ant promptly 
carried it away. The ants that had never left the original site gradu- 
ally appeared to become aroused by the activities of the workers 
around them, until they, too, sought out and found the new site. 
I observed only one instance of adult transport in the course of a 
shift in colony location, when a normally pigmented minor worker 
carried a teneral worker. Whether the transfer process also involved 
some other, more subtle form of recruitment is unclear. However, 
well defined routes between the old site and the new were lacking. 
The size of the observation box limited these shifts in nest location 
to at most a few centimeters; emigrations over greater distances 
might well be differently organized. 
Acanthomyrmex ferox. Shifts in nest location also occurred in 
captive A. ferox. These were initiated by the queen, which often ran 
out of the brood area following a disturbance; workers and males at 
the nest site were not so readily disturbed and thus were usually left 
behind. When one or more workers located her again the colony 
shifted to her new location. Minor workers carried the brood and 
males. The males were grasped dorsally at the trunk or waist, with 
their heads directed either up or down. 
