1929 ] 
Coloration in Polistes pallipes 
35 
3. If I had found only the males marked in yellow, I could 
have accounted for it on the ground of the usual condition of 
the greater tendency of the males to vary (see Enteman), 
but here I found that the workers, 28 in number, actually 
showed the coloration which is characteristic of the male; 
in fact, the similarity was so strong that only by counting 
the abdominal segments could the sexes be distinguished. 
The male pallipes showed the conspicuous yellow bands about 
the segments, some of which extended around to the dorsal 
surface; precisely the same condition obtained in many of 
the workers, only the degree of marking varied in the 
individuals of both sexes. I submitted to an expert some of 
these workers so colored, and he identified them promptly as 
P. variatus. Hence this is in all probability a colony of P. 
pallipes , with the males showing variation toward variatus 
and the workers too resembling the males. Dr. C. H. Turner 2 
has shown that the workers of Vespa Carolina resemble the 
males in coloration. 
Whether this perplexing condition is the result of the 
founding of the colony by two mothers of distinct species, 
which is improbable, or whether it is a case of pure variation 
within the colony, it shows one very important aspect of the 
study of variation, viz., that it is of supreme importance to 
make studies from a sufficiently large number of entire 
colonies taken directly from the nest near the end of the 
season, especially in the preparation of such works as Ente- 
man’s “Coloration in Polistes. There she states (p. 21) ; 
“P. variatus merges into P. pallipes as we pass eastward, and 
into P. aurifer as we cross the plains to the southwestward,” 
and again (p. 37) “It is hardly probable that we have in 
P. variatus a primitive species which has differentiated in 
two directions, but as we shall see from a study of a geo- 
graphical distribution of the species, P. aurifer and P. pallipes 
are two originally distinct species which, from the course 
of their migrations northward, have come together in the 
Mississippi Valley and by their co-mingling produced a 
species having in some measure the characteristics of both.” 
Yet I believe that the 59 insects taken from this nest 
were all of one species, and possibly the reader will agree 
2 Psyche, February 1908, page 1-3. 
