1974] 
Brown — Ant Genus Proceratium 
71 
sis mameti in rotten wood. Near the end of the day, when the sun 
was getting low, I was at the eastern end of the plateau where it 
begins to rise suddenly to the peak. Here a 2-centimeter-thick hollow 
rotting stick lying on the leaf litter unexpectedly yielded a nest of 
sluggish red ponerines, obviously Ectatommini in habitus. I got the 
nest alive into a plastic “live tube” and kept it for a week until it 
succumbed to mold. I was much excited by the find, although I as- 
sumed at the time that I had a species of Gnamptogenys belonging 
to the Indo-Australian “Stictoponera” group, because of the rather 
large size and more or less shining integument of the workers, and 
the distinct (though small to a hand lens) eyes. Even this would 
have been a remarkable range extension. 
On the next day I collected in other parts of the island, including 
the scrubby “peat forest” on high ground in the south, then being 
destroyed and replanted (disastrously!) with hurricane-vulnerable 
exotic pines. The bag was discouraging, consisting almost entirely of 
introduced ant species. A rapid traverse with Mr. Edgerly of the 
southern Cocotte Mountain, badly stripped by a recent hurricane, 
turned up nothing but introduced ants. 
On the first of April, though I was scheduled to leave on an eve- 
ing flight to Bombay, I tried Le Pouce again. A telephone call to 
Mr. J. Vinson, who had collected some of Donisthorpe’s material, 
convinced me that the main path on the LePouce plateau should not 
be avoided. I arrived there early in the afternoon ; the day was heavily 
overcast, threatening rain on the peaks, and it took me about an hour 
to walk up to the plateau. Whereas the sunny Sunday in the scrub 
shade had yielded almost no ants foraging, I now found foragers on 
foliage and on the hard-packed earth of the trail every few meters 
of the way. 
These were mostly Camponotus aurosus and Pristomyrmex spp. 
( = Dodous) , native Mauritian species. Before long, on the trunk 
of a small tree by the path, I found a sparse trail of bright red ants 
climbing the bark. Closer examination revealed these to be pre- 
dominantly the ectatommine I had collected on the previous Sunday, 
but interspersed with these were workers of Pristomyrmex bispinosus 
(Brown, 1971) which, with their gasters carried partly curled under, 
looked remarkably like the ectatommines. It is hard to avoid the im- 
pression that some kind of mimicry involves these two species in this 
habitat. The ectatommines ascending the trunk nearly all carried in 
their mandibles tiny whitish spherical objects that proved eventually 
to be arthropod eggs — probably spider eggs. 
