Anting and caving mix! Semana Santa is a big holiday in Venezuela but unlike most of my paisanos I head for the hills instead of the beaches. While there not many tanga clad beauties in the rain forests I did get buzzed by finding a nest of Leptogenys while I was eating lunch during the course of exploring a pothole. I do not know the species yet but in this same mountain I have come across several colonies of a larger species, Leptogenys unistimulosa. In the case of the nest next to the pothole entrance it seems there is more than one queen present in the nest, at least judging by the external morphology, though this time the apparent queens do not have the ladle-shaped mandibles found in at least some species.

John Lattke
Museo Inst.Zoologia Agricola
Universidad Central de Venezuela
Apartado 4579
Maracay 2101-A, Venezuela
fax: +58.243.550.7085
email: piquihuye@fastmail.fm