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Psyche 
[June 
in the laboratory (not those with which the above-mentioned tests 
were conducted), where such exuviae, originally scattered about a 
foraging arena, may be gathered into dense craters about the entrances 
to Lubbock nests. 
Summary and Conclusions 
In a parallel series of experiments to those reported by Wilson 
(1958) and Wilson, Durlach, and Roth (1958) with Pogonomyrmex 
badiuSj the effects of oleic acid, caproic acid, methylbenzylamine, 
n-butyric acid, n-valeric acid, formic acid, and triethanolamine as 
behavioral releasers in the ant Myrmecia vindex were investigated 
both in the laboratory and the field. The comparison was deemed 
particularly interesting because of the archaic character of the 
Myrmeciinae and their societies. 
As with Pogowomyrmex and other higher Formicid genera, oleic 
acid was found to act as a releaser of both necrophoric and digging 
behavior, suggesting the early establishment of this set of reaction 
patterns in Formicid social evolution — a not unexpected situation 
in view of the highly adaptive character of this pattern in ridding 
the nests of dangerous animal decomposition products, perhaps in 
response to the bacterial production of oleic and related fatty acids. 
In Pogonomyrmex , n-butyric acid, n-valeric acid, and n-caproic 
acid stimulated weak to moderate alarm behavior, passing over into 
digging behavior. In Myrmecia , caproic acid stimulated mildly 
necrophoric behavior, associated with some digging and burying 
behavior. Exposure to filter papers of cocoons impregnated with 
11-butyric acid resulted in deposition of earth grains on the treated 
object. No reaction was observed to n-valeric acid. 
Thus responses to these substances were of the same general quality 
as those reported for P. hadius. There were, however, very marked 
differences in the responses of M. vindex to two presumed releasing 
substances: formic acid and triethanolamine. Formic acid neither 
stimulated necrophoric nor digging behavior nor prevented immediate 
transport into the nest of formic-acid-treated cocoons. This result 
was somewhat surprising to the authors in view of the highly positive 
and specific attack reactions stimulated by formic acid in Myrmecia 
gulosa mentioned earlier, which have been reported elsewhere 
(Haskins, Hewitt, and Haskins, 1973). The most marked contrast 
between behavior patterns of P. badius and M. vindex , however, 
occurred with those released by triethanolamine. With M. vindex , 
vapors of this compound consistently stimuated the most conspicuous 
necrophoric behavior of any substance tested, while also acting as a 
