364 
Psvche 
[Vol. 85 
Results and Discussion 
Social Organization ofL. ambiguus colonies 
A total of 60 hours were recorded over the three colonies for a 
grand total of 3145 observations. Ethograms for the three colonies 
of L. ambiguus are reported in Table 3. A total of 46 behaviors were 
recorded for workers and 13 for queens. Despite the large catalog 
size, no behavior was unique to L. ambiguus; all in Table 3 are 
relatively common to many species included in Table 1. 
As expected, queens were much less active than workers (Table 
3). Their behavior was almost exclusively directed towards the 
brood; the exceptional occasion for colony La-B occurred when a 
queen was observed walking outside the nest and taking a drink; she 
later returned inside. Because of the paucity of data on queen behav- 
ior, analyses below concern only worker behavior. 
Frequencies of observations for behaviors over three colonies are 
given in Figure 1. Sample coverages were uniformly greater than 
99% (Figure 1). Consequently inferences about the true colony 
repertoire can safely be made. There was considerable variation 
among colonies (Figure 1), yet the distributions were not signifi- 
cantly different from each other (x^ = 13,80, 14 df, P > .05). Thus 
distributions of observations over all behavior categories were 
roughly equivalent. 
Comparisons of absolute frequencies among colonies showed that 
many worker behaviors were observed in all colonies (Table 3). For 
some, ethogram frequencies were nearly equal (IL, CP, ATW, RW) 
whereas for others the correspondences were not good (RE, IE, 
ALW). A third class of behaviors included those observed for only 
one or two nests (CE, FED, AAE, CR). Thus considerable inter- 
nest variation existed. For a given colony, some behaviors known to 
occur in the species were missing from the ethogram, some were 
common or rare relative to other colonies, and some were equally 
frequent to others. Despite apparent discrepancies in absolute fre- 
quencies, the rankings of behaviors by frequency were similar over 
the three colonies (Kendall’s coefficient of concordance; W = .864, 
27 df, P < .001). That is, behaviors commonly observed in one col- 
ony were also common in others whereas those rare in one tended to 
be rare in all. In particular, behaviors missing from one colony’s 
ethogram were generally rare in others. Therefore, although abso- 
lute frequency varied from nest to nest, relative frequencies were 
similar. 
