1971] 
Sheldon & MacLeod — Chrysopidae 
1 17 
best appreciated when it is considered in conjunction with the sea- 
sonal cycle of this species. The adults undergo a reproductive dia- 
pause during the cold months of the year (MacLeod, 1967; Tauber 
et al^ 1970), and in the early fall migrate from the field commu- 
nities into the forest edge areas (Zeleny, 1965; Sheldon and 
MacLeod, in prep.) where they eventually enter the leaf litter and 
spend the winter. Dissections show that throughout the winter the 
gut is largely empty, most individuals containing only a few scat- 
tered setae, pollen grains, and sooty-mold fragments. There is no 
evidence of extensive feeding. It seems likely that this material 
represents the undigested residue of feeding late in the autumn, 
particularly as it is difficult to account otherwise for the presence 
of pollen in the gut contents at this time. During unseasonably 
warm periods of the winter there is some movement of the adults 
within the litter and a few may temporarily leave this habitat and 
fly about, so that some of this particulate matter which we have 
seen in our winter dissections may derive from mid-winter feeding 
on persistent honeydew containing pollen grains and mold fragments. 
Dissections made during December and January of 1969-1970 do, 
however, demonstrate the long-term persistence of the residue of 
late autumn feeding, since this interval had not been interrupted by 
warm periods. The gut contents of active mid-winter individuals 
sometimes include a large amount of clear liquid, which suggests 
that they imbibe free water at this time. 
With the arrival of warmer weather in the early spring, the 
adults move out of the litter and begin to search for food. The 
specimens in the early spring samples in our study (Table 1 — 
April 1 - 1 5 ) show typical honeydew remains in their gut contents, 
although most specimens are far from full. There is no honeydew 
production at this time of the year, and the source of this material 
in the gut remained an enigma until we noticed that early spring 
adults could be beaten, with considerable success, from the dry, 
persistent leaves of such tree species as Quercus alba and Q. palustris. 
Since many of these leaves had areas of what appeared to be old 
honeydew on their surfaces, we placed a number of such leaves 
in a cage with newly emerged, lab-reared adults. An eaxmination 
of the gut contents of these adults 24 hours later gave results quali- 
tatively identical to what we had encountered in the guts of our 
field-collected samples. We have not determined the nutritional 
adequacy of old honeydew, and it is possible that such other food 
sources as fermenting sap flows, where one might expect to find 
similar contaminants to those found on honeydew, are the actual 
