PSYCHE 
Vol. 78 
March- June, 1971 
No. 1-2 
THE REPRODUCTIVE PATTERN OF 
DINOPONERA GRANDIS ROGER 
(HYMENOPTERA, PONERINAE) 
WITH NOTES ON THE ETHOLOGY OF THE SPECIES 
By Caryl P. Haskins 1 and Paul A. Zahl 2 
Introduction 
The recent stimulating suggestions of Hamilton (1964#; 1964^; 
1970) that social behavior in the Hymenoptera may have evolved 
at least in part as a consequence of particular conditions favoring 
kinship selection offered by the haplodiploid pattern of sex deter- 
mination in the higher Hymenoptera have, among other things, 
given special significance to the detailed study of breeding patterns 
in social members of that order. In this connection, we have for 
several years been investigating the breeding patterns, the effects of 
excessive inbreeding, and the modes of formation of new colonies, 
in a number of primitive ants. In this context, species in which 
either sex lacks functional wings at maturity take on special interest. 
Outside the Dorylinae and scattered groups of socially parasitic ants 
in other subfamilies, such forms, in which a typical mating-cum- 
dispersion flight is evidently impossible, are rather rare among the 
higher Formicidae. It is notable, however, and may be of a yet 
unidentified evolutionary significance, that marked brachyptery and 
even apterv in females are unusually evident in the two most 
generalized subfamilies of ants, the Myrmeciinae and the Ponerinae. 
Within the single genus Myrmecia, for example, forms in which 
the reproductive and colony-founding female is subapterous or even 
wingless and exhibits radically reduced thoracic musculature are by 
no means uncommon. Among the Ponerinae, as Wheeler pointed 
out some years ago (1933), wingless eratogynes replace the normal 
female forms in several genera, such as Acanthostichus , Eusphinctus , 
M egaponcm, Onychomyrmex, and Pletroctena. These ergatogynes, 
’Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. 
’National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C. 
Manuscript received by the editor May 5, 1971. 
T 
