40 
Psyche 
[June-Sept. 
A SINGULAR CREMATOGASTER FROM GUATEMALA 
By William Morton Wheeler 
Among- a number of ants which I collected during the 
spring of 1935 in Guatemala one of the Crematogasters is 
so unusual that it merits special description. Two colonies 
of these insects were found while I was collecting with Dr. 
Marston Bates on March 19 (which happened to be my 
seventieth birthday) along the northern shore of the exqui- 
sitely beautiful Lake Atitlan. Each colony was nesting in 
the soil under a stone, one in an open sandy spot a quarter 
of a mile south of the hotel at Tsanjuyo, the other in a grassy 
meadow about a mile farther on, near the village of Pana- 
jachel. The approximately equal populations of both these 
colonies comprised males, females, workers and brood. The 
extraordinary appearance of the males, which were small, 
wingless, slow-moving creatures with conspicuous white 
thoraces and clung huddled together on the lower surface 
of the stone when they were not being carried about by the 
workers, led me to collect as many specimens as possible of 
the adults and brood of all the castes. It was the very height 
of the dry season, and further search in the two localities 
revealed no other colonies of this ant or indeed of other 
species, except a few colonies of the fire-ant ( Solenopsis 
geminata Fabr.) and of certain common forms of Pseudo- 
myrma and Camponotus, which were nesting in the dead 
branches of the trees and shrubs. 
Comparison of specimens from the two Crematogaster 
colonies with other Neotropical species of the genus shows 
that the workers are so similar to those of C. ( Orthocrema ) 
sumichrasti Mayr that, apart from coloration, no important 
differences can be detected. The worker and female of the 
typical sumichrasti from Mexico are yellow, whereas the 
corresponding castes of the Atitlan form are dark brown or 
