8 
Psyche 
[Vol. 89 
Pheidole brood was stored in the Cerapachvs nest. Apparently the 
booty of this raiding expedition was so abundant that Cerapachvs 
preferred to keep only the more valuable and better preservable 
brood of the prey species, and they discarded the less valuable 
cadavers of the adult Pheidole. In other instances, however, where 
Cerapachvs had only, adults of prey species available, I observed 
Cerapachvs feeding on the gasters of dead Pheidole workers and 
soldiers. 
This experiment was conducted on the 25th and 26th of October 
1980. At this time there was no Cerapachvs brood in the colony. On 
November 10, 1980, I noticed the first large clutch of eggs in the 
Cerapachvs nest tube. On December 1 1, 1980, the colony had many 
large (presumably last instar) larvae, and another large cluster of 
eggs (Fig. 4). The colony still contained a very good supply of 
Pheidole larvae (Fig. 4), which did not grow or develop further but 
which were obviously alive. Under the microscope one could see 
that the prey larvae slightly moved their mouthparts. Workers, 
queens and larvae of Cerapachvs all fed on the Pheidole larvae. On 
December 26, 1980, there were still some prey larvae left. Many of 
the large Cerapachvs larvae had pupated; in addition the nest con- 
tained many medium sized larvae and another large clutch of eggs. 
On January 3, 1981, a Cerapachvs worker was observed leaving the 
nest tube and venturing out into the arena, for the first time since 
October 27, 1981. At this time I provided another fragment of a 
Pheidole colony with larval brood in the arena; and on January 5, 
1981, Cerapachvs conducted another raid, very similar in details to 
that just described. The fact that the captured Pheidole larvae were 
kept alive inside the Cerapachvs nest chamber for a period of more 
than two months (but did not pupate or visibly increase in size) 
strongly suggested that they were sustained in a state of metabolic 
stasis. Recently Maschwitz et al (1979) provided experimental evi- 
dence that the ponerine species Harpegnathus saltator and Lepto- 
genys chinensis paralize prey objects by stinging and thereby are 
able to store prey a limited time. In one case the preserving paralysis 
effect was observed to last for two weeks, and in no instance did the 
stung prey object ever recover from the paralysis. Similar observa- 
tions have been made independently by Traniello (unpublished 
data) with the ponerine species Aniblvopone pal/ipes. 
