SEXUAL CALLING BEHAVIOR IN 
HIGHLY PRIMITIVE ANTS* 
By Caryl P. Haskins 
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut 06510 
In recent years an interesting mating pattern has been discovered 
in a number of socially parasitic and dulotic Myrmicine ants, 
including the related genera Leptothorax, Doronomyrmex, and 
Harpagoxenus, and in the guest ant Formicoxenus nitidulus 
(Buschinger, 1968, 1971a, 1971b, 1974; 1975). Typically the alate or 
ergatoid young female leaves the parent colony, crawls to a 
prominent position, and settles there motionless for a long period — 
sometimes amounting to hours — with gaster raised, legs extended, 
and sting extruded. Sooner or later males assemble about the 
“calling” female, and mating takes place. Buschinger, who first 
observed it in these genera, has described the pattern in detail for the 
slave-making Harpagoxenus sublaevis (1968), and in the perma- 
nently socially parasitic Doronomyrmex pads, Leptothorax kutteri, 
and L. goesswaldi (1975). He also observed the pattern in fine detail 
in populations of F. nitidulus (1975) maintained in the laboratory as 
guests of Leptothorax acervorum, and found it generally similar to 
the others, though differing in detail in ways to which we will later 
allude. Buschinger was able to demonstrate that in all these forms a 
sex-attractant pheromone was released from the poison gland, as 
Holldobler (1971) had been the first to demonstrate in the Myrmi- 
cine ant Xenomyrmex floridanus. 
Recently Moglich, Maschwitz, and Holldobler (1974), in a par- 
ticularly provocative study, have presented the results of detailed 
analyses of “tandem-calling” behavior in the independently-living 
Leptothorax acervorum, L. muscorum, and L. nylanderi, a pattern 
by which workers of these independently-living species recruit 
sisters to newly discovered food sources, one recruiter guiding only 
one follower to the source at a time. A component of the initial 
behavior of the recruiting worker is described as essentially identical 
with the “calling” behavior in Harpagoxenus females, and the 
authors call attention to the interesting hypothesis posited earlier by 
Holldobler (1971) that, in at least some Myrmicine ants, sex 
* Manuscript received by the editor May 15, 1979. 
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