Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/165



whole winged brood issues from the nest in a great swarm. Since insects are normally winged creatures, it is evident that these flying termites represent the perfect forms of the termite colony--they are, in fact, the sexually mature males and females. The several forms of individuals in the termite com- munity are known as castes. An intensive search through the galleries 9f a termite nest might reveal, besides workers, soldiers, and the members of the winged brood in various stages of devel- opinent, a few individuals of still different kinds. These have heads like the winged forms, but rather larger bodies; some have short wing rudiments (Fig. 8o), others have none; and finally there are two individuals, a male and a femme, bearing wing stubs from which, evidently, fully-formed wings have been broken off. The mme of this last pair is just an ordinary-looking, though dark-

bodied termite (Fig. 82 A); but the female is dis- tinguished from all the other mem- bers of the colony by the great size oi her abdomen (B). Through the in- vestigations of entomologists it is known that the

Fzç. 79- Adult winged caste of Reticulitermes tibialis, short-winged, and wings shown on oneBanksSideandOfSnyder)the body only. (From wingless individu- als of this group comprise both males and femmes that are potentially capable of reproduction, but that in general all the eggs of the colony are actually produced by the large-bodied female, whose consort is the male that has lost his wings. In other words, this fertile [133]

INSECTS