2 
Psyche 
[Vol. 87 
Myrmica host colony, where the provancheri brood is normally kept 
apart from the Myrmica chambers. However , provancheri workers 
enter the galleries of their hosts, frequently mount the Myrmica 
workers, and apparently gain food by vigorously licking (“sham¬ 
pooing”—Wheeler 1910) and begging their victims. 
Soon after the description ofL. emersoni Wheeler (1901), Holliday 
(1903) published a very accurate and comprehensive study on the 
peculiar polymorphism of this little ant. She described, measured and 
dissected more than 1000 specimens from over 20 nests, and she 
discovered that only very few winged or dealate females were among 
them. About one third of all female individuals had to be character¬ 
ized as “microgynes, ergatoid females, triocellate, biocellate and 
uniocellate workers”, the remaining specimens were macroergates 
and microergates. Holliday also found out that all these ants had 
rather well developed ovaries, and a typical spermatheca. Surprising¬ 
ly, she failed to judge whether sperm was present in the receptacula or 
not. 
Recently we had investigated the social structures of the guest ants, 
Formicoxenus nitidulus (Buschinger and Winter 1976) and F. 
hirticornis (= Leptothorax hirticornis Emery) (Buschinger 1979) 
both of which have a polymorphism similar to that of L. provancheri, 
and a “functional monogyny” with always one fertile queen per nest, 
and often several inseminated but sterile “replacement queens” in 
addition. Fertile and sterile females there may either be normal, 
dealate queens or intermorphs, both often occurring together in the 
same colony. Thus we wanted to find out whether a similar system 
might be present in L. provancheri. With respect to a possible 
relationship between provancheri and Formicoxenus we further 
studied the sexual behavior, and the karyotype of this species. 
2) Material and Methods 
Leptothorax provancheri was collected in a moist pasture with a 
small rocky outcrop beside a gravel road, in the municipality of St- 
Augustin, near the limits of Ste-Catherine, Comte de Portneuf, on 23 
August 1979. The guest ant and its host had developed flourishing 
populations only in the rocky part of this open habitat. Colonies were 
located in the soil and between the roots of grass and herbs growing 
on the flanks and atop of the rounded rocky outcrops of the meadow. 
The host species, Myrmica incompleta Provancher, inhabits these 
