1988] 
Heinze & Buschinger — Leptothorax 
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supernumerary a-females in addition to one single queen were called 
functionally monogynous. 
Isoelectric focusing in ultrathin polyacrylamid gels was carried 
out to estimate relationships of nestmates within some colonies, and 
to secure conspecifity of allopatric colonies (Heinze and Buschinger, 
1988). 
Results 
Leptothorax spec. A 
Fifty four of a total of 206 queenright colonies of Leptothorax 
spec. A collected in June 1983, 1985, and 1988 contained more than 
one and up to seven females (Table 1). In additional colonies col- 
lected in July 1987 and 1988, we counted up to 10 and more females, 
most of them inseminated. Because at the end of July this year’s 
females have eclosed and may already have mated, it cannot be 
ruled out, however, that the higher number of females found at that 
time may be a transient phenomenon and that the young mated 
females will leave their mothers’ nests before hibernation. It is quite 
certain that all females found in June colonies have hibernated in 
the nest, and we also found females in July and even August whose 
fat body color indicated that they had not eclosed recently. 
All of the females and some of the workers in 30 colonies col- 
lected in June, and in an additional 59 colonies collected in July, 
were dissected. In all but four colonies only one female was found to 
be inseminated and fertile and, thus, a queen; the other females, 
though most were inseminated, did not show any corpora lutea and 
their ovarioles were only poorly developed (Table 2). In at least two 
of the four colonies with two A-females, workers engaged in heavy 
fighting and the queens were attacked. In these cases it is probable 
that neighboring nests were mixed by error during collection. 
Both gynomorphic and intermorphic queens were accompanied 
by inseminated, sterile females, gynomorphic or intermorphic or 
both, but the percentage of June colonies with a gynomorphic queen 
and additional females was distinctly smaller (4.2 percent) than that 
of comparable colonies with intermorphic queens (28.9 percent). 
This difference is striking in each of the June collections and it is 
present in the July collection also. The majority of the supernumer- 
ary females (61 out of 80) were inseminated, but sterile. In three 
queenright colonies all the additional females were uninseminated. 
