Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Excerpt from Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History
In all previous attempts to explain dulosis, authors have gone at once to the most salient instinct of sanguinea - its tendency to make forays on other species, kidnap their young, and permit these to de velop into auxiliaries. This is undoubtedly the striking character of the whole phenomenon. But a too exclusive interest in this matter has, in my opinion, withdrawn attention from certain other instincts of considerable importance. Foremost among these are the instincts relating to the founding of the sanguinea colony. In a question which involves the phylogeny of the instincts exhibited by adult colonies of ants, it is necessary to study the instincts of young and incipient colonies; inasmuch as a colony, being an individual of a higher order, may reasonably be expected to conform more or less closely to the biogenetic law. To my knowledge no accurate and ir refutable observations on the founding of sanguinea and Polyergus colonies have ever been made either in Europe or America. We do not know how the sanguinea colony comes into possession of its first batch of auxiliaries. Two alternatives suggest themselves. The sanguinea queen may be able to establish a formicary and bring up her first brood of workers all by herself, after the manner of the majority of ants, and the first batch of slaves may be acquired by dulosis. On the other hand, it may be impossible for the sanguinea queen to bring up her own young. For this purpose She may have to enter a small or depauperate colony of the auxiliary species. In this case the sanguinary ant in the earlier stages of colony formation would be a true social parasite, and dulosis would be due to the manifestation of later, superadded instincts. The little evidence that can be pro duced is indirect, but I am inclined nevertheless to accept the latter of these two alternatives as the more probable, for the following reasons.
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