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Statary


Statary is a term currently applied in fields such as ecology, ethology, psychology. In modern use it contrasts on the one hand with such concepts as migratory, nomadic, or shifting, and on the other with static or immobile. The word also is of historical interest in its change of meaning as its usage changed.

In current usage in fields such as biology, commonly means in a particular location or state, but not rigidly so. Army ant colonies for example are said to be in a statary phase when they occupy one bivouac for an extended period instead of just overnight. This is as opposed to a nomadic phase, in which they travel and forage practically daily. This does not mean that ant colonies in a statary phase do not move nor even that they do not forage while statary; they often do both, sometimes daily. Correspondingly a colony in a nomadic phase does not travel without rest; it bivouacs for the night. The significance of the terms is that the colonies' behaviour patterns differ radically according to their activity phase; one pattern favours maintaining a persistent presence where brood is being raised, whereas the other favours continual nomadic wandering into new foraging grounds. Such phases have raised interest in studies in aspects of comparative psychology and evolution.

The term statary also applies in contexts other than ants or colonial organisms. Swarm-forming species of locusts go beyond having statary and nomadic phases of behaviour; their growing nymphs actually develop into different adult morphologies, depending on whether the conditions during their growth favour swarming or not. Locusts that adopt the swarming morphology are said to be the migratory morphs, while the rest are called statary morphs. Effectively similar morphs occur in some other insect species, such as army worm.

In some technical fields statary need not refer literally to location or motion, but refer figuratively to their having particular characteristic but non-rigid attributes, such as atmospheric pressure. The following section instances examples of such senses occurring in the history of the term.

Statary, from the Latin root statarius, meaning "standing fast", first came into prominent use in the English language in Positions, the work of Richard Mulcaster in the sixteenth century. He spoke of statarie substance much as, in contemporary English, one might speak of fixed assets or fixed property: "...either rich or poore : landed or unlanded, which is either the having or wanting of the most statarie substance." It is unclear whether he coined the English version of the word.


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