. Ants; their structure, development and behavior. ut there are certain points onwhich they differ, and many which they have left undecided till morematerial is forthcoming and profounder studies of whole groups ofgenera have been undertaken. They differ mainly on the limits of twoof the five subfamilies, the Ponerinae and Dorylinse, Emery maintain-ing that the tribe Cerapachysii belongs with the Dorylinae whereasForel assigns it to the Ponerinre. The tribe in question certainlypossesses peculiarities which ally it with both subfamilies, but the THE HISTORY OF MYRMECOLOGY. 33 development and h
. Ants; their structure, development and behavior. ut there are certain points onwhich they differ, and many which they have left undecided till morematerial is forthcoming and profounder studies of whole groups ofgenera have been undertaken. They differ mainly on the limits of twoof the five subfamilies, the Ponerinae and Dorylinse, Emery maintain-ing that the tribe Cerapachysii belongs with the Dorylinae whereasForel assigns it to the Ponerinre. The tribe in question certainlypossesses peculiarities which ally it with both subfamilies, but the THE HISTORY OF MYRMECOLOGY. 33 development and habits of its species are so imperfectly known thatits exact position cannot be determined at the present time. I havefollowed Forel in placing it with the Ponerinae though I appreciateEmerys reasons for dissenting from this Some of thetribes, especially the Ponerii and Myrmicii still embrace very hetero-geneous groups of genera, and many of the genera, especially thosewhich are known only from specimens of a single caste, are probably. FIG. 78. a Cryptocerus of Central America. (Original.)b, worker ; r, head of soldier from above. a, Soldier; placed in the wrong tribes. Ashmead (1905^) recently undertook toconstruct a new arrangement of the genera, but as Emery has shown(19060), it is anything but an improvement on the existing classifica-tion. What we need for the present as not a new arrangement, theerection of a lot of new genera on superficially aberrant species and theraising of every subgenus to generic rank, but a painstaking study ofall the species in the existing groups. Until such studies have madeappreciable headway, the existing avowedly imperfect classificationshould not be discarded without at least as much thought as has beendevoted to its construction. 1 Since these remarks were written, Emery (Dcutsch. Ent. Zcitsch., 355) has changed his views on the position of the Cerapachysii. He nowplaces them under the new caption Prodorylins
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectants, bookyear1910
