1975 ] Buren , Nickerson and Thompson — Conomyrma 31 1 
flattened and lunate rather than complete. The nest openings are 
very small (approximately 1.5 mm) compared to other Conomyrma 
nests and are blocked with soil diurnally. The tiny workers only 
forage nocturnally. We suspect the small, blocked nest entrances 
and nocturnal foraging habits may be adaptations which allow these 
incipient colonies to coexist near larger nests of their own species 
without excessive competition. In full sized nests of C. flavopecta 
the workers usually forage diurnally and the nest entrances are 
sometimes blocked nocturnally. 
In the interest of keeping a permanent record of the mixed nest 
phenomenon and in seeking other data, 1 of these nests, found in the 
experimental farm area at the University of Florida on 23 May 
1 975 , was excavated and collected as thoroughly as possible. Three 
hundred twenty-six C. flavopecta workers and 726 C. insana workers 
were collected from this nest and have been deposited as a voucher 
series in the Florida State Collection of Arthropods, Gainesville. 
A single dealate queen also was captured in the nest, and in con- 
firmation of our hypothesis, was a queen of C. insana rather than 
C. flavopecta. All pupae (approximately 75) mature enough to 
identify (by head shape) were insana rather than flavopecta and all 
callow workers found (36) were also insana. 
The data suggest that C. insana is a temporary parasite of C. 
flavopecta. The modus operandi for the adoption of the parasitic 
queen, elimination of the host queen, formation of the mixed nest, 
and eventual maturation to an unmixed insana nest must be similar 
in a general way to numerous other temporary parasitic ant species. 
The findings that a C. insana queen was the only queen found in 
the mixed nest and that only brood of C. insana and young adults 
of C. insana were present strongly suggests that the C. flavopecta 
queen had already been eliminated. 
Distributional patterns of the ants at the Gainesville location are 
shown in Figs. 1 and 2. All unmixed C. insana nests appear to be 
clustered into localized enclaves, whereas the unmixed C. flavopecta 
nests have a more scattered but probably not random spacial ar- 
rangement. Small peach trees present in the study area do not 
appear to influence the distribution patterns. No Conomyrma nests 
were found in ian area of high, dense grass, however. 
The distribution of the mixed C. insana-flavopecta nests needs 
explanation which we cannot give at this time. The original mixed 
nest in the study area was found on 23 May 1975. It was excavated 
and collected on 27 May. On 1 June to 10 June the area was 
