Article beginning on page 111.
Psyche 12:111-114, 1905.

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ANTS FROM THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. BY WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER, NEW YORK, 3. Y. . During the past year Mrs. Annie Tmmbull Slosson spent several months on the summit of Mount Washington, N. H., collecting and studying the insects. She has kindly sent me all the species of ants she succeeded in taking. Though
the collection is a small one, as this group of insects was very poorly represented on the summit, it is nevertheless of-more than usual interest. It comprises the following forms:
I. C~zn@o?~ofits hercthmw I&~Iperdiis Latreille var. $ictus Forel. A single dealated female. My collection contains two very similar specimens taken dur- ing August 1901 in the same locality by Dr. C. S. Bacon. 2. Formica saqitinea asumz Forel. Two deflated females. I have recently found two colonies of this form in the Litchfield Hills, Conni, at an altitude of about 1000 ft. The females are rather small (y-S mm.) compared with those of our more abundant F. saquines riibicunda. The gaster and head are black, the thorax and petiole dull yellowish brown, the former mottled with black, the legs and antennae dark brown. The rich red color of our common forms of sa?guinea is completely lacking.
The clypeal notch is broad and deep.
3.
Lasius nyer L. var. americanus Emery. A single winged female of very small size (5.3 mm.) but in other respects like the common form. 4.
Lasius urnbratus mkfits Nylander var. Three males and two winged females resembling the corresponding sexes of var. (zphidicola Walsh, except that the females collected by Mrs. Slosson are decidedly darker. 5.
DoZichoderus tizschen~i Mayr var. gqyafes Wheeler. A single deiilated specimen of the hitherto unknown female of this species and variety. It measures
4 mm. and resembles the worker in the structure of theepinotum. The head and
thorax are very smooth and shining, the epinotum somewhat more opaque, with scattered shallow foveolas. The body and appendages are deep black, the tips of the mandibles and articulations of the legs slightly brownish. 6. Lepfofhorax acervorum cmadensis Provancher. Three deiilated females all darker than the females of the typical form in my collection. 7.
Myrmica rubra brevinodis Emery var. A single winged female differing



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PSYCHE [December
the typical form in being of smaller size and much darker color and in having the antennal scape somewhat straighter at the base. 8. Mymica rubra scabri~miis Nylander var. A single deglated female belonging to a form of this subspecies with a small calycutate dilatation at the base of the antenna1 scape, long straight epinotal spines and strong sculpturing on the head, thorax and pedicel.
9. Mys-mica mbra scabrindis Nylander var. sckencki Emery. , A single winged female taken by Dr. C. S. Bacon during August 190 1 on the summit. This insect is darker in color than females from Colebrook, Conn., in my col- lection. --
This little colIection of ants is remarkable because it comprises males and males but no workers. This fact taken in connection with Mrs. Slosson's tatement to me that she was quite unable to find any colonies of ants on the mrnit, but at most chance aggregates of two or three females, indicates that is portion of the mountain, which is above timber-line, must be peopled anew very year by female ants that never succeed in establishing colonies. These
females (and the shorter-lived males, when these are found, as in the case of adus nixtus above recorded) undoubtedly drift to the summit while on their ptial flight. This is shown by the relatively large number of winged females in e above list. They are in all probability individuals that have ascended to an usual altitude and have been swept onto the mountain summit by an upper air merit. This seems to be the only way of accounting for the peculiar occurrence forms like Dollckoderus ^agates in such a locality. This ant is not known to ed further north than the low pine-barrens of New Jersey, where it nests in warm, white sand about clumps of grass and attends plant-lice on the pines d scrub oaks.*
The occurrence of this insect on a mountain summit 6293 ft. gh and some hundreds of miles further north must be regarded as accidental. y in case the DdicfwtIenis females succeeded in establishing their colonies on the summit of Mt. Washington would this condition be truly analogous to that of certain plants like the eastern prickly pear (O/MM/~ &da) which grows in low sandy spots in Florida and on the rocky ledges of certain hilltops in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. A strictly parallel instance, however, seems to be presented by Ti~pi~tot~tttprui~~os~~~~~ Roger, an ant which I have taken in the sandy pine-barrens of New Jersey and on the summits of some of the + -
Ramapo Mountains in southern New York, but not in intermediate stations. Tonf, my paper: The North American ants of the Gtnua Dolichoderua, Bull. Am. Mus,



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[December
color and in
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In the study of mountain faunas it is well to bear in mind what Forel says in his work on the ants of Switzerland*: "One should never judge of the habitat of a species from the elevations at which isolated males or females have been captured. We have, in fact, observed that these sexes always seek the summits for the purpose of mating. On a beautiful day in summer, they often alight in regions where their species cannot subsist, and where they soon perish. Thus M. Bugnion found males of formica Yufst and fraten~is on the Hiifi Glacier and he brought me specimens of these ants from the summit of the Statzerhorn (Grisons). I have myself taken males and females of these ants on the snow- covered ridge which separates the Engadine from the valley of Roseg between the Piz Surlei and the Piz Corwatsch. Now neither the formicaries of rufa nor Y
the formicaries of fralensis are found above the region of pines, whereas the winged individuals just mentioned had ascended to that of the eternal snows. Hence a, female Mynnecima Laztt-ei//ei which I took at a considerable elevation in the Jura near Mont Tendre does not prove to me that the formicaries of this species subsist at such an altitude."
The absence of ant colonies on the summit of Mount Washington is to be attributed to the length and rigor of the winter at such an elevation. In the Rocky Mountains colonies are very abundant up to an altitude of 9000 to I 0,000 ft. and' may he found even as high as timber-line between s 1,000 and 12,000 Et. I have observed this distribution on Pike's Peak, near Cripple Creek, and on the neighboring mountains. Very similar conditions seem to prevail in the Hima- " layas,
Bare, cold mountain tops thus appear to be a source of ucatastrophic elimi- nation" to those winged seeds of their species, the female ants. Other sources
of such elimination are torrential showers occurring during or just after the marriage flight; many birds, which are fond of eating winged ants; and drown- ing, as the result of long flights out to sea or over our Great Lakes. During the summer months'the insect drift which is cast up on the beaches of Lake Michi- gan and Lake Superior sometimes contains thousands of dead female ants. Other less important agents of destruction are some of the solitary wasps that provision their nests with female ants captured during or just after the mar- riage flight.
Aphi/mtkops fr~@?rts, for example, has been seen to capture and carry home our common Pornwa fum var. sulisericea. Mr.. H. L. Viereck has
sent me specimens of these wasps collected together with their prey by Mr. Mown Hebard in Baraga County, Michigan. When we add to these destructive *Les Founnis de la Suitse, Zurich 1874, p. 21 I.



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agencies the attacks of-lethalfungiand subterranean insects onthe females after - - they have shut themselves off from the world in their earthern cells for the pur- pose of ovipositing and rearing their brood, we are able to understand why so very few of the myriads of female ants that annually take their nuptial flight, ever survive to become the mothers of flourishing colonies.



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