PSYCHE 
Vol. 70 September, 1963 No. 3 
FURTHER STUDIES ON THE HABITS OF 
CRYPTOCERUS TEXANUS SANTSCHI 
(HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE)* 
By Wm. S. Creighton 1 
Department of Biology, City College, New York 
The observations presented in this paper were made on a colony of 
Cryptocerus texanus Santschi secured on December 19, 1961 at a 
station 21 miles north of Mathis, Texas. This colony was placed in 
small Janet nests and taken to the Southwestern Research Station 
of the American Museum of Natural History near Portal, Arizona. 
There it was observed for three and a half months. During this 
period Dr. Mont Cazier furnished much helpful information about 
the beetle larvae in whose burrows texanus lives and Mr. Martin 
Mortensen took the photographs included in this paper. I wish to 
thank Dr. Cazier and Mr. Mortensen for their help. 
In 1954 Dr. R. E. Gregg and the writer published a study of the 
distribution and habits of Cryptocerus texanus (1). A large part of 
this study was concerned with the phragmotic activities of the texanus 
major. These responses as well as other activities discussed in the 
paper were shown by specimens in observation nests. Although the 
writer hoped to observe the activities of free nests of texanus , attempts 
to do so have met with no success so far. Nevertheless it has been 
possible to set up observation nests which permit the ants much greater 
freedom of action than did those used in our earlier study. 
Before discussing these nests I wish to consider certain character- 
istics of texanus which largely determine its choice of nest sites. In 
common with a number of arboreal ants which occur in the southwest 
(species in the genera Pseudomyrmex , Crematogaster , Leptothorax and 
Camponotus) texanus does not construct its own nest passages. It may 
be too much to state that texanus is incapable of tunneling through the 
wood in which it lives, but there is abundant evidence to show that 
it does not ordinarily do so. Instead it utilizes burrows made by wood- 
Trofessor Emeritus, City College, New York. 
* Manuscript received by the editor January 28, 1963. 
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