1983] 
Herbers — Social Organization in Leptothorax 
373 
entrance (LOT) was likely to move outside the nest, then to be 
groomed by nestmates upon reentry. Thus some components of 
polyethism were statistically verified by examination of long-term 
individual worker behavior. However, the division of labor inferred 
from Table 6 was considerably weaker than the instantaneous transi- 
tion matrix (Table 5) suggested. Individuals involved in brood care 
acts also displayed behaviors in other roles over a 30-min. period. 
Likewise, co-occurrences of behaviors in other roles were very 
common. The pattern emerging from consideration of all data is 
that workers strongly specialized in the short-term but over 
30-minutes the specialization was weakened. 
A final component of social organization is morphological bias in 
polyethism. Worker size is known to be correlated with behavior in 
many species, including the monomorphic L. longispinosus (Her- 
bers and Cunningham 1983). The range of worker sizes in L. ambi- 
guus is indicated in Figure 3. Pooled data are drawn there, since 
Figure 3. Morphological variation in L. amhiguus workers. Head width distribu- 
tion was normal, and the largest worker was less than 1.5 times that of the smallest. 
