1988] 
Heinze & Buschinger — Leptothorax 
315 
Five colonies in the June samples lacked fertile queens, but had 
one to three intermorphic b->A-females and additional b-females. 
Of 36 colonies that had only a single female, 10 did not have a fertile 
queen but did have an intermorphic b->A-female, which in some 
cases was just ready to lay her first eggs. These presently queenless 
colonies usually were quite small and consisted of few (1 to 10) 
workers and some brood. We did not find any queenless colonies 
with gynomorphic b->A females. All gynomorphic females that 
were the only female in the colony were found to be fully fertile. (In 
these evaluations the 12 colonies with both female morphs were not 
included. Females were dissected in only five of these colonies; in 
one case the queen was a gynomorph. Genetically mediated queen 
polymorphism in Leptothorax spec. A turned out to be a helpful 
tool in evaluating the relatedness of the different females in a col- 
ony. In one colony from Tadoussac, for example, the intermorphic 
queen produced only intermorphic female sexuals. One of the 
supernumerary females, however, was an inseminated gynomorphic 
female.) 
C-females, not inseminated, but fertile females, which produce 
males, were found in two or three colonies in the field. 
Other Leptothorax 
As the data in Table 2 indicate, colonies of the closely related 
Leptothorax spec. B, of the Western species C and of L. retr actus 
frequently contained several females. Here dissections proved, how- 
ever, that all three species regularly have truly polygynous societies. 
In colonies of spec. B, which were collected in June, usually all 
inseminated females were fertile. Colonies of L. retractus and L. 
spec. C were examined in August; here a certain percentage of the 
females may have been only recently inseminated and thus not yet 
fertile. 
Colony founding in L. spec. A 
Of the more than 500 colonies of Leptothorax spec. A collected 
by us since 1979 in North America, only two appeared to be incip- 
ient colonies, consisting of a single queen (one gynomorph and one 
intermorph) and brood. In two or three more cases the colony con- 
sisted of two females, one fertile, the other not, and brood. The 
occurrence of colonies without a fertile queen (see above) but with 
nearly fertile b->A-females, in June, suggests that colony founda- 
tion by budding or colony fission takes place. 
