WAYS OF THE WILD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 158, 6 July 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

WAYS OF THE WILD.

THE AWT WORLD. ORGANISED COMMUNITIES. (By A. T. PYCROFT.) Why does man take such an interest in ants and their ways? Keith C. McKeown, entomologist of the Australian Museum, considers that our interest in these insects, and bees, and wasps, is because there undoubtedly are points of resemblance between their social life and ours. The social insects, living in highly organised communities, are possessed of extraordinary instincts which compel the notice of even those persons to whom an insect is not worthy of even passing interest. In many cases the resemblances to our own institutions are superficial, but there remains many undoubted parallels. There has been a tendency in recent years to impute human thoughts and motives to the ants, and other highly developed insects, but, on detailed study we find that the insect lives in a very different world to our own, being tied to a world of routine which must be followed automatically, although here and there one may find gleams of indisputable intelligence and initiative. The insect comes under the sway of influences quite outside its own control. These are known as tropisms. Thus there is phototropism, the attraction to artificial light, which causes the moth to iTy unerringly into the flame of the candle, quite without its own volition. There is heliotropism or attraction to natural light, chemotropism, the attraction to variotfs chemical substances or emanations, and many more. Ants are to be found practically throughout the world, with the exception of the Antarctic, and they have penetrated into almost every region by their power of exploiting nearly all available means of life. The geological history of the ants is an ancient one, fossil ants being found in large numbers in the tertiary deposits. Here they appear so and in such numbers that it is evident that they must have existed from a very much earlier period, although no fossils have yet been found in older deposits. Everyone is familiar with the_ term "a fly in amber." Ma:.y of the fossil ants have come down to us in this form, having, long years ago, become embedded in the resin while it was liquid, and on its hardening have been preserved as they died, perfect in every detail. The modern ants differ but little in structure from their earliest known ancestors. An Organisation of Females. The ant community' may be said to be an organisation of females, resembling the mythical communities of Amazons, but, while the Amazons were supposed to be organised for war, the ant colony exists only for the care of the young and the continuance of the race, everything being sacrificed to these ends. The inhabitants of an ant's nest are winged males and females, the so-called queen, who was, in her youth, winged like her daughters, and the soldiers and workers, both of which castes are sterile females. One hot summer day the queen ant of our colony emerged from her home, where she has lived until this day, and together with her sisters and brothers, took flight • upon gauzy wings, filling the air with a fluttering swarm of ants from her own and surrounding nests, for a number of nests of the same species in the vicinity usually send forth their swarms on the same day. these flights are known as nuptial flights, and it is here that the ants select their mates. After pairing the female ant falls to ' the ground, usually at a considerable distance from her old home, and, seeking out a suitable crevice under some stone or piece of bark, divests herself of her wings, biting them off at the base l , since they are now useless and only an encumbrance in her new life. Before she left •her old home the queen was well fed and had stored up large reserves of fat in her body against the time when she must found a new colony. Until the worker ants, which will emerge from the eggs which she now lays, carry on the duties of the nest, the queen does not feed, but lives upon the stores of fat in her body. She lays a few eggs at first, gathering them into a little pocket, anil stands guard over them until they hatch. The grubs are fed upon saliva which contains many of the constituents of the fat stores in her body, and the now useless muscles of the bases of her wings, which are broken down and assimilated. The ants developing from these grubs or larvae are usually undersized. As soon as their bodies have hardened, these ants, workers and soldiers, carry out all the work of the nest, and from this time onwards the queen is relieved of all duties except that of egg laying. She now lays hundreds of eggs each day, becoming purely an. egg-laying machine, and since a queen ant may live for twelve or fifteen years, the number produced during her life time is enormous. The so-called queen does not rule the community in spite of popular opinion on that question, but is just as much a servant of what, in the case of the bees, has been callud the "spirit of the hive" as any member of the other castes. Soldier and Worker Ants. The soldiers and workers are all sterile females. The soldiers are equipped with large and formidable jaws, of a nightmare variety of forms, and powerful stings, and' upon them devolves the defence of the nest and the carrying out of forays, like the robber barons of old, upon the colonies of other species. In the workers the jaws are usually more adapted to the needs of service, and are suited to the various duties which are carried out by their possessors. Like the soldiers they are also armed with stings for defence, if not for offence. It has been mentioned that ants are equipped with stings, as though this were the rule, but many species do not carry them. Their method of attack is to spray their enemies with the poison or squirt it into the wounds made by their jaws or mandibles. Among both workers and soldiers of some species there is great diversity of form and size. There are large forms and small forms, workers and soldiers, major and minor, ants with small heads, ants with enormous heads, and ants with mediumsized heads. The duties of defence fall to the lot of the soldiers, while the duties of the workers are manifold, the excavation and maintenance of the nest, the care and feeding of the young, the provision of food for all the other members of the community, the care of their live stock, and, in fact, the multitudinous tasks of a thriving colour.