1957] 
Weber — Cephalotes atratus 
63 
to excavate. Some freshly excavated cavities contained 
scarcely a score of brood and with room only for a few 
workers. No auxiliary nests were formed in the Cassia 
tree. 
Area Patrolled by the Ants 
The entire crown of the saman was available to the 
ants. They crawled over every main branch and were 
frequently found on the most remote smallest twigs and 
leaves. They occasionally foraged over the grass at the 
base of the tree but not more than 3-6 meters away from 
it. The Cassia tree was also used, the ants gaining access 
over the long bridge formed by the intermingled branches. 
To prove that the ants were from the saman colony, 
workers on the saman were marked with yellow paint on 
the thorax, those on the Cassia trunk were marked on 
the gaster. One from the latter site was recovered later 
on the saman at a point where it had to traverse a mini- 
mum distance of 32 meters, whether by the grass route 
at the base of the trees or by the aerial bridge. Another 
ant was recovered a similar distance away on the saman. 
Marked ants from the saman were later taken at the base 
of the Cassia tree and on the Cassia at the aerial bridge 
site. Other Cassia ants were recovered in saman nests. 
The total volume of foliage used by the colony was thus 
well in excess of the 2000 cubic meters of the saman crown 
and approached the volume of soil used by a large Atta 
colony. The area patrolled was not computable on the 
same basis as that of a terrestrial ant but ants of the 
colony were taken some 50 meters distant from each other, 
an indication of the diameter of the area. 
The Colony 
A. The Female 
The female was discovered on April 27 after hours of 
chiselling into the hard wood on March 3 and later. She 
was in a small cavity with eggs and minima larvae and 
was removed to an observation nest, together with a few 
media workers firmly clinging to her and some other 
workers and brood. Within two hours she laid nine eggs. 
The workers assisted with egg-laying. As an egg would 
