Ants of the American Museum Congo Expedition. A Contribution to the Myrmecology of Africa

New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1922. First edition.
W. M. WHEELER'S COPY OF HIS MAGNUM OPUS ON BIOLOGY OF ANTS--LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
17x24x6 cm bound in original paper covers, with (very) faded ink signature "W.M. Wheeler Nov. 3/22" front cover. 1139 pages, color frontis by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, 45 plates, 103 figures, 47 maps. Edges worn and browned, text unmarked. Good+ (faint) signed copy in archival folder. The most massive bulletin ever published by the American Museum. Page vii: "This edition of separates is 300 copies, of which about 100 are mailed on the date of issue, and the others placed on sale in the Library". 25 (truncated) copies in WorldCat. FROM THE INTRODUCTION: "The present volume has grown out of a study of the ants collected by the American Museum Congo Expedition, under the direction of Messrs. Herbert Lang and James P. Chapin, and of a smaller collection made in the same region by Dr. J. Bequaert. The working up of this material has proved to be far from easy, owing to the state of the literature on the African Formicidae. After much of the taxonomic work had been completed, Dr. Bequaert discovered that additional ant material could be obtained from the tomachs of the numerous frogs and toads collected on the expedition, and Mr. G. K. Noble kindly went over all the Congo amphibians and cut out and labelled their stomachs. Among the ants, which were in a surprisingly good state of preservation, there were many interesting forms, notably representatives of the genera Phrynoponera, Psalidomyrnex, and Leptogenys, not taken by the collectors in the field. I trust that in its present form the work will not only prove to be valuible as an account of the Formicidse collected by the first American expedition to the Congo, but will also serve as a book that can be profitably taken into the field by future collectors throughout the Ethiopian Region."
WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER (1865 - 1937) was an American entomologist, myrmecologist, and professor. He is considered a taxonomist of the highest order, and became a leading authority on the behaviors of social insects. In 1899, he was offered a "Professorship in Zoology" at the University of Texas at Austin. the four years of laboratory management and teaching at UT left him weary, and in 1903 he accepted the position of curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Here he organized and arranged the Hall of Invertebrate Life, in addition to continue his work on ants. After five years of museum work, the call to teach would return. In 1908, Wheeler became professor of economic entomology at Harvard. In 1915, he became the dean of the Bussey Institution at Harvard, a highly regarded biological institute. For his work, Ants of the American Museum Congo Expedition, Wheeler was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1922. He was appointed in 1926 to be associate curator of insects at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and from this time until his retirement in 1933, he was professor of entomology. (Inventory #: 1666)