. Ants; their structure, development and behavior. s to live their own sweetlives unmolested in the midst of the warmth andplenty of the nest. We see, therefore, a gen-eral tendency in many of these creatures tomimic the ants in color, form or pilosity(mimetic type), in others to assume a limuloidshape, with broad shoulders and rapidly taper-ing abdomen, combined with a hard or veryslippery surface, which prevents their beingheld fast by the ants (loricate type), and inothers to develop tufts of yellow, scent-diffus-ing hairs, which appeal to the gustatory andolfactory senses of the ants ( sym
. Ants; their structure, development and behavior. s to live their own sweetlives unmolested in the midst of the warmth andplenty of the nest. We see, therefore, a gen-eral tendency in many of these creatures tomimic the ants in color, form or pilosity(mimetic type), in others to assume a limuloidshape, with broad shoulders and rapidly taper-ing abdomen, combined with a hard or veryslippery surface, which prevents their beingheld fast by the ants (loricate type), and inothers to develop tufts of yellow, scent-diffus-ing hairs, which appeal to the gustatory andolfactory senses of the ants ( symphiloid type).The mimetic and loricate types are most per-fectly realized among certain synechthrans andsymeketes, whereas the symphiloid characters, though foreshadowed insome of these insects, reach their full development only in the^rueguests. The parasites of ants, finally, like those of other animals, haveacquired the most exquisite and specialized apparatus for exploitingthe individual host. I shall here consider a number of typical synech-. FIG. 226. Megasti-licus formicaritts, a syn-echthran from the nestsof Formica (Original.) 3§^ thrans and synukcu> and continue witli an account of the symphilesand parasites in the next chapter. The Synechthrans.—This group, which is not a very large one,comprises a number of agile, carnivorous Staphylinid beetles belongingto the genera Mynncdonia, Myrmcccia, Lamprimis, Qucdins, Xantlw-linns, Mcyastilicns, etc., which lurk in the less frequented galleries ofthe nests and avoid encounters with the ants. One of the most inter-esting of these genera is Myrmedonia, which is represented by numer-ous species on all the continents and is of generalized and primitivestructure, so that it is regarded by Wasmann as related to the ancestralform from which some of the more specialized Staphylinid synoeketesand symphiles have sprung. The European species have been carefullystudied by Wasmann (1886). The sooty M. fnncsta
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectants, bookyear1910
