| → of an ant-community, 1866 1869 |
| ants, 1872 |
|
| → sterile double-flowered plants, which are regularly produced in large numbers, 1866 1869 |
| double sterile plants 1872 |
|
| ↑ 1 blocks not present in 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869; present in 1872 |
| As with the varieties of the stock, so with social insects, selection has been applied to the family, and not to the individual, for the sake of gaining a serviceable end.
|
|
| → Thus I believe it has been with social insects: a 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| Hence we may conclude that 1872 |
|
| → has been advantageous to the community: 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| have proved advantageous: 1872 |
|
| → of the same community 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| have 1872 |
|
| → And I believe that 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| OMIT 1872 |
|
| → until 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| many times, until 1872 |
|
| →of an ant-community,
and the
→sterile double-flowered plants, which are regularly produced in large numbers,
with the
neuters of the same community. ↑ →Thus I believe it has been with social insects: a
slight
of
or
correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community,
→has been advantageous to the community:
consequently the fertile males and females
→of the same community
flourished, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members
the same
→And I believe that
process
been
→until
that prodigious amount of difference between the fertile and sterile females of the same species has been produced, which we see in
social insects. |
|
| But we have not as yet touched on the climax of the difficulty; namely, the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes. The castes, moreover, do not
graduate into each other, but are perfectly well defined; being as distinct from each
as are any two species of the same genus, or rather as any two genera of the same family. Thus in Eciton, there are working and soldier neuters, with jaws and instincts extraordinarily different: in Cryptocerus, the workers of one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads, the use of which is quite unknown: in the Mexican
the workers of one caste never leave the nest; they are fed by the workers of another caste, and they have an enormously developed abdomen which secretes a sort of honey, supplying the place of that excreted by the aphides, or the domestic cattle as they may be called, which our European ants guard
|
