1966] 
Gotwald and Brown — Simopelta 
27 
of uneven but moderate length, most abundant and longest on gaster. 
Color piceous, pronotum a little lighter and more reddish; mandibles 
and appendages lighter, yellowish-brown. 
The colony of S. oculata was found by chance at about 9 A.M. 
on the; morning of 2 March, 1966. Mr. Norman Scott, in charge 
of the Course in Fundamentals of Tropical Biology, Organization 
for Tropical Studies, and Brown were wading up a brook in second 
growth/ rain forest. We were looking for foraging columns of an 
Eciton lucanoides colony that had moved in this direction from a 
log bivouac dissected by us the day before. Mr. Scott directed 
Brown’s attention to files of slender, dark-colored ants marching 
over vines and shrub stems along the margin of the brook. On seeing 
the ants, he immediately concluded that they must be some Simopelta 
species. 
The route of the ants ranged from about 30 cm to 150 cm above 
ground level over vine and stem, and lay entirely in deep shade. They 
moved in dense single file, almost all in one direction, which proved 
to be nestward. Following the file for perhaps 6 meters stretched-out 
distance, we shortly discovered the nest, which occupied a straight, 
completely hollow dead twig about 1.5 cm in diameter and 33 cm 
long, suspended vertically by a dead vine about 1.5 m above the 
ground in dense second-growth forest. 
The single incoming column was burdened with the larvae, pupae, 
and pharate adult workers and soldiers of a medium-sized species of 
Pheidole, clearly the dominant ant genus of this area. Partly eaten 
prey specimens were later found among the nest contents. The twig 
containing the nest was removed to a plastic bag and kept for later 
laboratory opening. The column was not traced back toward its 
origin, but we estimated that it contained at least several hundred 
Simopelta ants in the files we saw. The nest twig contained 361 
workers by count when it was opened, and it hardly seemed spacious 
enough to contain more than 2,000 workers plus a queen, the prey, 
and the brood found, about 700 in number, which consisted entirely 
of small and medium larvae. 
When the queen was found upon opening the nest twig, she ran 
rapidly, always followed by at least one worker whose head literally 
rested upon her gastric dorsum as it followed immediately in a tight 
tandem. The queen with her attendant resembled some multi-legged 
animal, so close and persistent was the association. Although the 
exact position of the worker’s head could not be seen as the pair ran 
