W. M. Wheeler.
The North American Ants Described by Asa Fitch.
Psyche 24(1):26-29, 1917.

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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. novoeboracensis Fitch) and' the "walnut ant" (F. carya 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. novaboracensis 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 deb&. 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 Pu&e 24:26-28 ( 1917). hup Ytpsychu einclub orgt24/24-026 html



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19171 Wheeler-The North American Ants Described by Fitch 27 species should be known as Solenopsis molesta (=deb& 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 Fore1 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 "novcpboracensis" by Fitch. It is, perhaps, permissible to amend so obvious an orthographic error.
6. On examining the types of Fitch's 8'. carp (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. oethiops 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 Nylander's species. It is now evident that nearcticus becomes a synonym of caryoe and that the closely related fallax of Europe, described a year later, becomes C. caryoe var. fallax Nyl. Hence the synonymy of the typical caryce would stand as follows :
Camponotus (Camponotus) caryoe Fitch.
Formica caryoe Fitch, Trans. N. Y. State Agric. Soc. 14 (1854), 1855, pp. 855-859, g , 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.




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28 Psyche [February
?Formica atra Buckley, Proc. Ent. SOC. Phila., 6, 1866, p. 160, Q . Camponotus marginatus Mayr (nee Latreille), Verh. 2001. bot. Ges. Wien. 36, 1886, p. 423 (in part).
C. marginatus var. nearcticus Emery, 2001. Jahrb. Abth. f. Syst. 7, 1893, p. 675, Q , 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. caryoe was merely a synonym of Camponotus pennsyi- 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 caryoe, 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. caryoe 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. pavidu8 Wheeler.-Gulf States. A
subsp. subbarbatus Emery.-New Jersey to California. var. paucipilis Emery.-Maryland.
subsp. discolor Buck1ey.-Texas to Illinois. var. clarithorax Emery.-Pennsylvania to California. var. cnemidatus Emery.-Maryland.




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