Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
In many species of ants there are two, and in the leaf-cutting ants of Brazil there are three, kinds of neuters which differ from each other and from their male and female ancestors "to an almost incredible degree." The soldier caste is distinguished from the workers by enormously large heads, very powerful mandibles, and "extraordinarily different" instincts.
"Let them not fear ... the fond calumny of neutrality; but let them know that is true which is said by a wise man, that neuters in contentions are either better or worse than either side.
The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose uncemented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of labour between the two classes of neuters in these blind species.
In favour of this hypothesis, Professor Kolliker adduces the well-known facts of Agamogenesis, or "alternate generation"; the extreme dissimilarity of the males and females of many animals; and of the males, females, and neuters of those insects which live in colonies: and he defines its relations to the Darwinian theory as follows: "It is obvious that my hypothesis is apparently very similar to Darwin's, inasmuch as I also consider that the various forms of animals have proceeded directly from one another.
F. Smith has shown how surprisingly the neuters of several British ants differ from each other in size and sometimes in colour; and that the extreme forms can sometimes be perfectly linked together by individuals taken out of the same nest: I have myself compared perfect gradations of this kind.
But we have not as yet touched on the acme 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.
In the simpler case of neuter insects all of one caste or of the same kind, which have been rendered by natural selection, as I believe to be quite possible, different from the fertile males and females, in this case, we may safely conclude from the analogy of ordinary variations, that each successive, slight, profitable modification did not probably at first appear in all the individual neuters in the same nest, but in a few alone; and that by the long-continued selection of the fertile parents which produced most neuters with the profitable modification, all the neuters ultimately came to have the desired character.
In favour of this hypothesis, Professor Kolliker adduces the well-known facts of Agamogenesis, or "alternate generation"; the extreme dissimilarity of the males and females of many animals; and of the males, females, and neuters of those insects which live in colonies: and he defines its relations to the Darwinian theory as follows:
But there happens to be a tolerably clear proof that such changes as the evolution of complicated structures and habits and social instincts can take place independently of use-inheritance. Working bees, being infertile "neuters," cannot as a rule transmit their own modifications and habits.
Presently a wild excitement ensues; the foster- mothers, "frightened, fierce, and restless," as though suddenly attacked by an incomprehensible insanity, conceive an aversion for the young; "the neuters extirpate the larvae and drag them out of the nest," and the drama of destruction draws to a close with "the final catastrophe; the infirm and the dying are dismembered, eviscerated, dissected in a heap in the catacombs by maggots, woodlice, and centipedes."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking