STUDIES ON ARIZONA ANTS (3) 
THE HABITS OF POGONOMYRMEX HUACHUCANUS 
WHEELER AND A DESCRIPTION 
OF THE SEXUAL CASTES 
By Wm. S. Creighton 
Department of Biology, College of the City of New York 
It has been more than a third of a century since Wheeler 
described Pogonomyrmex huachucanus from a few workers 
taken in the Huachuca Mountains of Arizona (1). During 
this period only five additional records have been published 
for this interesting little species. Three of these were 
carried in Olsen’s 1934 monograph on Pogonomyrmex (2). 
The other two records were published by Cole in 1934 (3) 
and 1937 (4). While these records have increased the 
known range of huachucanus , they have added little to our 
knowledge of the habits of this insect. There is good 
indication that P. huachucanus has special significance in 
the phylogeny of the genus Pogonomyrmex, hence it is 
gratifying to be able to amplify our rather meager data on 
this ant. During the summers of 1950 and 1951 the writer 
found numerous colonies of huachucanus and was able to 
study some of them in considerable detail. This paper pre- 
sents the results of these studies, a review of previously 
published observations on huachucanus and a description 
of each of the three castes. 
The nests of huachucanus examined by the writer were 
very uniform in one respect. In every case they were built 
in extremely harsh, stony soil. The most striking example 
of this was a nest taken at the summit of Montezuma Pass 
in the Huachuca Mountains. This nest was constructed in 
the hard-packed gravel of the highway. Road work had 
compressed the gravel to such an extent that “soil” around 
the nest was almost as hard as concrete. Most of the nests 
were situated on rather steep slopes and they were gen- 
erally fully exposed to the sun. The direction of the slope 
seemed to be of little importance. Three of the nests were 
constructed beneath stones, the others had no covering 
object present. In the latter case the nest was provided 
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