1987] 
Peeters & Crewe — Ophthalmopone berthoudi 
205 
Figure 1. Worker of Ophthalmopone berthoudi carrying a male between two 
nests — workers are carried in an identical way. 
sexuals or workers (Traniello and Holldobler, 1984). In O. ber- 
thoudi, social carrying is not only used during the evacuation of old 
nests and the settlement of new ones, but is a habitual, routine 
event between established nests. An ant carried to another nest in a 
colony remains associated with it; if it was active above ground, it 
will return to this new nest after future performance of its task. 
While being carried, an ant is also provided with visual navigation 
cues which enable her to return to the nest of origin. When marked 
recruiters and recruits came apart outside the nests, the latter were 
unable to proceed but could walk back to the nest from which they 
originated. A detailed analysis of the pattern of recruitment between 
nests will be presented elsewhere. While the proximate adaptive 
significance of inter-nest transfers is unclear, they have the effect of 
maintaining contact between the nests of polydomous colonies. 
Foraging behavior 
O. berthoudi feeds exclusively on termites. The ants only hunted 
those species which foraged in accessible places, and termite nests 
were never raided. Cooperative hunting was never observed. Three 
termite species seemed to make up most of the ants’ diet. Macro- 
termes natalensis and Odontotermes badius forage principally on 
