Our insect friends and foes / by F. Martin Duncan.

  • F. Martin Duncan
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Our insect friends and foes / by F. Martin Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a semi-circular piece of leaf about the size of a sixpenny-piece, which it has cut from the foliage. Indeed the homeward bound army, marching along the path that has been cleared between the tree and the nest, looks like a pro- cession of tiny leaves. On arriving at the nest, these workers drop their burdens, and at once return to the tree; while another swarm of the worker minors seize upon the pieces of leaves, and placing them into position so as to form a kind of thatch to the mounds covering the entrances to the subterranean nest, cover them with a layer of earthy granules, which they have excavated at some depth below the surface and worked up for this purpose. Not content with stripping the trees of their foliage, the Sauba Ants will enter the houses at night, and plunder the stores of provisions; carrying off grain by grain the farinha or mandioca meal, which is so largely used for bread by the artisan classes in Brazil. Bates noted that on these plundering expeditions, two classes of workers are always seen, namely, the small true workers who carry on all the labour, and the large major workers with huge, smooth heads, who do nothing. The third class of workers, with large heads clothed in front with hairs, have not been observed to take any part in these forays, but appear normally to live deep down below the surface of the ground, in the subterranean chambers of the nest. Altogether these Sauba Ants of tropical South America are most interesting insects, and offer a very fruitful field for further investigation. E
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