File:Wheeler 1924 Fig 6.jpg

Summary

Figure 6. The author observing the courtship of Cardiacephala myrmex on the heart-shaped leaves of a Piperaceous shrub on Barro Colorado Island. Photographed by Dr. David Fairchild.

Wheeler, William M. 1924. Courtship of the Calobatas—The Kelep ant and the courtship of its mimic, Cardiacephala myrmex. Journal of Heredity 15 (12): 485–495.

This study is based on observations Wheeler made during a visit to Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama the summer of 1924. This island was created in 1913 with the damming of the Chagres River in order to build the Gatun Lock of the Panama Canal. The damn formed Gatun Lake, which inundated the extensive tropical rainforest that existed below the island's current shores. The year before Wheeler's visit, BCI had become a biological reserve and its first field station was established. The introduction in Wheeler's paper (see below), shows that he, like other scientists that visited the station in its early days, saw the great potential it offered for studying tropical biology. Today the island, the field station, and all research is managed by the [Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). It would seem strange to anyone conducting research there now to imagine Wheeler and his group on the island in 1924, musing that more biologists should known about and visit BCI. Today the island hosts hundreds of ongoing studies involving scientists from many institutions, and the pristine rainforest of BCI is among the most well studied places in the world.

Wheeler wrote - "The observations recorded in the following paper were made at the tropical laboratory on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal zone, an institution concerning which my friend, Dr. David Fairchild, published a very interesting article in a recent number of the Journal of Heredity. He called attention to some of the larger opportunities which might attract serious students of animal and plant life to the station … During the past summer (a group that included myself) passed several delightful and profitable weeks on the island, (and were well accommodated). To say that we were profoundly impressed by the opportunities for investigation afforded by the laboratory, is a mild statement. The incidental observations here recorded were made within a few hundred yards of the building and relate to the performances of a couple of insects selected from an inexhaustible fauna."