THE NORTH AMERICAN ANTS DESCRIBED
BY ASA FITCH
BY WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER
[Reprinted from PSYCHE, Vol. XXIV, No. 1]
ft
26 Psyche [February
THE NORTH AMERICAN ANTS. DESCRIBED BY
ASA FITCH.
BY WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER,
Bussey Institution, Harvard University.
Asa Fitch, in his well-known report on the insects infesting fruit
and forest trees, first issued in 1855 in the Transactions of the New
York State Agricultural Society and in 1856 as a separate volume,
published descriptions and ethological notes on six species of com-
mon North American ants which he named the "cherry ant"
(Myrmica cerasi Fitch), the "troublesome ant" (Myrmica molesta
Say), the "silky ant" (Formica subsericea Say), the "wood-eating
ant" (F. herculeana L.; F. ligniperda Latr.), the "New York ant"
(F. novceboracensis Fitch) and the "walnut ant" (F. caryce Fitch).
Hymenopterists have bestowed little attention on Fitch's work and
have even misinterpreted some of his descriptions. A recent visit
to the United States National Museum, where I found the types
of his F. novceboracensis and caryce, has led me to study the de-
scriptions of these and the other species with a view to determining
the names by which they should now be known.
1. There is no difficulty in regard to Myrmica cerasi, which
Emery was undoubtedly right in regarding as a distinct and easily
recognizable color-variety of what had been previously described
by Say (1836) as Myrmica lineolata, now known as Crematogaster
lineolata var. cerasi Fitch.
2. Fitch described at length the habits of Myrmica molesta Say.
Mayr, Forel, Dalla Torre and others believed Say's species to be
merely the common house ant, Monomorium pharaonis L., because
Say mentioned its occurrence in dwellings, but as Fitch describes
it as nesting also "in our pastures and plowed fields and sometimes
doing much injury in cornfields, gnawing the blades of corn when
they are but a few inches high, for the purpose of drinking the
sweet juice which flows from the wounds," it is evident that he
refers to what Mayr later called Solenopsis debilis. The European
myrmecologists were misled by their inability to believe that a
small Solenopsis, closely allied to the European S. fugax Latr.,
could become a household pest. Many years ago I showed that
this is really the case and supported Emery's contention that Say's
1917] Wheeler The North American Ants Described by Fitch 27
species should be known as Solenopsis molesta (=debilis Mayr).
Fitch's observations, which were unknown to me at that time, are
additional confirmation of our view.
3. The silky ant, Formica subsericea Say, is, of course, the com-
mon form now regarded as merely a more pubescent variety of
F. fusca L.
4. Fitch's description of F. herculeana and ligniperda, which he
evidently believed to be synonymous, shows that he referred to
what we now call Camponotus herculeanus L. subsp. pennsylvanicus
DeGeer. He was thoroughly familiar with this insect and its
habits. *
5. Fitch's description of F. noveboracensis is very clear and
shows that he had before him specimens of what Forel later called
Camponotus ligniperdus var. pictus. Some years ago Pergande
proved this from examination of Fitch's types. As ligniperda is
merely a subspecies of herculeanus, the ant is now called C. her-
culeanus L. subsp. ligniperda Latr. var. noveboracensis Fitch. It
should be noted that the last name is spelled " novaboracensis"
by Fitch. It is, perhaps, permissible to amend so obvious an
orthographic error.
6. On examining the types of Fitch's F. caryce (several workers
and females) in the National Museum I was surprised to find that
they are identical with the form described by Emery in 1893 as
Camponotus marginatus Latr. var. nearcticus. Emery subse-
quently discovered that Latreille's marginatus was a variety of
C. maculatus Fabr. subsp. cethiops Fabr. and that what Roger and
later myrmecologists had been calling marginatus was really the
form described by Nylander in 1856 as fallax. In my later papers
I therefore referred nearcticus and a whole series of allied sub-
. species and varieties to Ny lander's species. It is now evident
that nearcticus becomes a synonym of caryos and that the closely
related fallax of Europe, described a year later, becomes C. caryce
var. fallax Nyl. Hence the synonymy of the typical caryne would
stand as follows:
Camponotus (Camponotus) caryce Fitch.
Formica caryce Fitch, Trans. N. Y. State Agric. Soc. 14 (1854),
1855, pp. 855-859, , 9 , cf ; First and Second Report on the
Nox. Benef. and Other Ins. State N. Y., 1856, pp. 151-155;
Third Report, 1859, p. 123.
28 Psyche [February
?Formica atra Buckley, Proc. Ent. Soc. Phila., 6, 1866, p. 160, 9 .
Camponotus marginatus Mayr (nee Latreille), Verh. Zool. hot. Ges.
Wien. 36, 1886, p. 423 (in part).
C. marginatus var. nearcticus Emery, Zool. Jahrb. Abth. f. Syst. 7,
1893, p. 675, 8,9; Wheeler, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist.,
21, 1905, p. 402; Occas. Papers Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 7,
1906, p. 24.
C. fallax Nyl. var. nearcticus Wheeler, Ann. Rep. N. J. State Mus.
(1909), 1910, p. 663; Journ. N. Y. Ent. Soc., 18, 1910, p.
222; Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 20, 1910, p. 342.
Both Cresson (Synops. Fam. Gen. Hymen., 1887, p. 255) and
Dalla Torre (Catalog. Hymen., 7, 1893, p. 247) assumed that
Fitch's F. caryce was merely a synonym of Camponotus pennsyl-
vanicus, but, as we have seen, Fitch was well acquainted with this
ant under the old name F. herculeana and we could hardly suppose
that so competent an entomologist would redescribe it under a
new name. And although some of the distinctive characters are
omitted in the description of caryce, it is, nevertheless, sufficiently
explicit, even if the ethological notes and the types did not make
the identification certain.
In conclusion the twenty described subspecies and varieties that
must now be referred to the American caryoe, as the specific type,
instead of to the European fallax, together with their known
distribution, may be listed as follows :
North American Forms.
C. caryce Fitch. United States and British America.
var. minutus Emery. United States and British America.
var. pardus Wheeler. New York and New Jersey.
var. tanquaryi Wheeler. Illinois.
var. decipiens Emery. Indiana to Utah,
subsp. rasilis Wheeler. Gulf States to Arizona.
var. pavidus Wheeler. Gulf States,
subsp. subbarbatus Emery. New Jersey to California.
var. paucipilis Emery. Maryland,
subsp. discolor Buckley. Texas to Illinois.
var. clarithorax Emery. Pennsylvania to California.
var. cnemidatus Emery. Maryland.
1917] Wheeler T/ie North American Ants Described by Filch 29
Eurasian Forms.
C. caryce var. fallax Nyl. Southern Europe.
var. ruzskyi Emery. Russia.
var. lameerei Emery. Tashkund.
var. kamensis Ruzsky. Kasan.
var. himalayanus Forel. Himalayas.
var. quadrinotatus Forel. Japan.
var. nawai Ito. Japan,
subsp. vitiosus F. Smith. Japan,
subsp. brunni Forel. Japan.
