1972] 
McCluskey & Brown — Paraponera 
337 
Upon return to Harvard the ants were placed in a glass-covered 
wooden box i m X 0.6 m X o.i m deep in E. O. Wilson’s labora- 
tory. In the box was a nest chamber made by Wilson (1962), with 
inside diameter of about 2 dm and depth of 2 cm ; constant moisture 
was applied on the center of the nest floor by a large wad of cotton 
serving as a wick from a continuous column of water through a tube 
from a bottle outside the box. The ants were offered mealworms, 
roaches, Drosophila cultures, egg yolk, and sugar water, the last 
being taken the most readily. There was much restless activity. Mor- 
tality was high, so that after a month or two there were only about 
ten workers and one larva left. None of the larvae matured no- 
ticeably. 
Efforts were made to get a dealate queen that had been taken near 
a light on Barro Colorado Island to start a colony. First she was put 
into a small Incite nest, but with little success. Then several of the 
larvae from the above described colony were placed with her, and she 
seemed to accept them. They appeared to remain in good condition 
for several weeks, but did not mature. When single workers were 
placed with her she grabbed them with her mandibles and hung on 
continuously. Later she was confined in a petri dish with 10 workers 
for two days; there was then seeming harmony, so she was put in 
with the main group of workers. There was no hostility evident ; but 
neither was there progress in colony formation. When most of the 
ants had died, she and the remainder were put into an aquarium half 
full of moist earth. They tunneled incessantly; a few survived sev- 
eral more weeks. 
In the field we had seen workers descending the branches with 
liquid droplets suspended between their mandibles, as has been re- 
ported by Weber (1946) for another ant in the same tribe, Ecta- 
tomma tuberculatum. Honeybees manipulate nectar with their 
mouthparts when concentrating it. At the same time enzyme from 
the bee digests sucrose in the nectar. It was therefore of interest 
to check for digestion of these droplets by Paraponera. This was 
done by Nevin Weaver and E. O. Wilson in Wilson’s laboratory, 
and they kindly made available the following unpublished results: 
One-molar sucrose was presented to the ants in a capillary tube. 
They held the solution between their mandibles, definitely agitating it 
with their glossae (egg yolk became frothy under the same condi- 
tions). Though the droplets slowly disappeared, they were not no- 
ticeably smaller until after 40 min. Of the six ants left undisturbed 
until the end of 2 hr, only one still had a droplet large enough for 
sampling. A droplet of solution was removed with a capillary from 
