The workers in the various species of ants are sterile, that is to
say, they take no regular part in the reproduction of the species,
although individuals among them may occasionally lay eggs. In addition
to this they have lost the wings, and the _receptaculum seminis_, and
their compound eyes have degenerated to a few facets. How could this
last change have come about through disuse, since the eyes of workers
are exposed to light in the same way as are those of the sexual
insects and thus in this particular case are not liable to "disuse" at
all? The same is true of the _receptaculum seminis_, which can only
have been disused as far as its glandular portion and its stalk are
concerned, and also of the wings, the nerves tracheae and epidermal
cells of which could not cease to function until the whole wing had
degenerated, for the chitinous skeleton of the wing does not function
at all in the active sense.
But, on the other hand, the workers in all species have undergone
modifications in a positive direction, as, for instance, the greater
development of brain. In many species large workers have evolved,--the
so-called _soldiers_, with enormous jaws and teeth, which defend the
colony,--and in others there are _small_ workers which have taken over
other special functions, such as the rearing of the young Aphides.
This kind of division of the workers into two castes occurs among
several tropical species of ants, but it is also present in the
Italian species, _Colobopsis truncata_. Beautifully as the size of the
jaws could be explained as due to the increased use made of them by
the "soldiers," or the enlarged brain as due to the mental activities
of the workers, the fact of the infertility of these forms is an
insurmountable obstacle to accepting such an explanation. Neither jaws
nor brain can have been evolved on the Lamarckian principle.
The problem of coadaptation is no easier in the case of the ant than
in the case of the Giant Stag. Darwin himself gave a pretty
illustration to show how imposing the difference between the two kinds
of workers in one species would seem if we translated it into human
terms. In regard to the Driver ants (Anomma) we must picture to
ourselves a piece of work, "for instance the building of a house,
being carried on by two kinds of workers, of which one group was five
feet four inches high, the other sixteen feet high."[39]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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