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Vespoidea
About: Vespoidea is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1365 publications have been published within this topic receiving 11769 citations.
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TL;DR: The queen’s thickened scape base and the largely smooth and shining alitrunk with overhanging scutal margins, are "protective" characters suggesting social parasitism as a way of nest-founding for this caste.
Abstract: _A_ number of ants have plug-shaped heads, known or assumed to be used to stopper the nest entrance. This phenomenon, called phragmosis, is best understoo.d in certain groups o.f Camponotus and Cephalotini (e.g. Wheeler I9IO: 209-212 Szabd-Patay I928 Creighton and Gregg 954), but Wheeler (I9OI: 534; 1927) also, described species with phragmotic-like heads in Pheidole, Crematogaster and the dacetine genus Colobostr,uma, while Patrizi (I948) published the problematical Solenopsis (Crateropsis) elmenteitae (placed by Ettersha.nk, 1966, in Oligomyrmex). In most of these forms, either the queens or the soldiers, or both, are the phragmotic castes; in Colobostruma leae, the assumed phragrnotics are the queen and the monomorphic workers. In the new species of Pheidole described below, phragmotic behavior at some stage of the life cycle is indicated only or t’he queen caste, and even then is inferred from her aberrant body form. But in this case, the plug is tormed, not by the head, but by the highly mo.dified gaster (Figs. 6 and 7). Two queens showing this plug-like modification of the gaster were taken separately trom rotten wood in rain to.rest in the. general vicinity of Manaus during my collecting trip of I962 in the Brazilian Amazon. In one case, a.nd possibly in both, the queens belonged to definite colonies with workers, soldiers and brood. (Notes on collection M-6o are ambiguous because two Pheidole queens, one of embolopx and one o.f a to.tally different species, were in the vial with this number, but the notes state that \"the\" queen was taken apart from the soldiers, workers and brood. Probably one of the two queens was taken up in the aspirator along with bits of rotten wood without my knowing it.) The queen’s thickened scape base (with a gelatinous sheath) and the largely smooth and shining alitrunk with overhanging scutal margins, are \"protective\" characters suggesting social parasitism as a way of nest-founding for this caste. The strong similarities in color, sculpture and pilosity between the queens and the accompanying
12 citations