1978] 
Haskins — Highly Primitive Ants 
413 
hours, Northern Queensland, in December of 1963, and maintained 
under constant conditions in the laboratory since that time. 
Several details of interest emerged from this range of observa- 
tions. The first was the virtually seasonally-independent nature of 
the events. In 1952 ‘ calling” workers were seen in September and 
October, in 1953 in July and November, in 1975 in April, May, 
June, July, and October, in 1976 in January and March. Thus every 
month was represented except February, August, and December. 
This is particularly noteworthy since the observations of 1952 and 
1953 were made on colonies from a population taken near Suther- 
land, N.S.W. in essentially a temperate location, while those for 
1975-76 were derived from a population in the vicinity of Nam- 
bours, Queensland, many miles to the north and in essentially a 
tropical rain forest area. 
Flights of males, as noted both by Brown (1958) and ourselves 
(1965), are likewise highly non-specific with respect to season. 
Worker “calling” and male flights both appear to take place 
predominantly during early to mid-morning hours. It is of interest, 
also, that the presence of males in the nest, much less their 
emergence, is not a prerequisite for worker “calling”. During the 
observations of “calling” made in January, 1957 and May 1975 
males were present in the nests, and in at least one case there was 
simultaneous male emergence. However, worker “calling” took 
place in the absence of male flights in October, 1952 and July 1953 
(involving the same colonies in which males were present during 
“calling” in 1957) and in all of the 34 instances recorded for Colonies 
1 and 3. In both those colonies males had long been absent, and 
examination of samples of pupae present in Colony #1 (3) made 
during the height of the “calling” period in that small community 
revealed only workers to be present in the brood. 
The length of time of the “calling” behavior of workers of R. 
metallica is typically brief, averaging 1-2 minutes (although one 
record period of more than 12 minutes has been noted). Usually, 
however, workers moved about after a short period, commonly 
resuming the behavior at another location. In this respect, the 
pattern resembled that observed by Buschinger for Formicoxenus 
nitidulus. 
It seems probable that this behavior in R. metallica (observed 
also in three other species of the genus: R. tasmaniensis; R. 
inornata, and R. violacea) does indeed correspond quite closely with 
