ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
Identification of an ant queen pheromone regulating worker sterility.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers.
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Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed, 224 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
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- Fraternal cooperation of hierarchical cancer parallels metazoan multicellularity and eusociality.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Age, caste, and social context shape ovarian morphology and transcriptomic profiles in red harvester ants.npj aging · 2025Article
- Cuticular hydrocarbon profiles reveal geographic chemotypes in stingless bees (Hymenoptera: Meliponini).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Test of the negative feedback hypothesis of colony size sensing in social insects.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Phenomenon of reproductive plasticity in ants.Current opinion in insect science · 2024Review
- Innate and learned components of egg recognition in the antRoyal Society open science · 2024Article
- Defensive behavior is linked to altered surface chemistry following infection in a termite society.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Queen fecundity, worker entourage and cuticular chemistry in the antProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Genome-Wide Analysis of the Odorant Receptor Gene Family inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- A real-time feedback system stabilises the regulation of worker reproduction under various colony sizes.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Queens control caste allocation in the antProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Evidence of queen-rearing suppression by mature queens in the little fire ant,Insectes sociaux · 2023Article
- Microstructures at the distal tip of ant chemosensory sensilla.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Identification of a queen primer pheromone in higher termites.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Honeybee queen mandibular pheromone fails to regulate ovary activation in the common wasp.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022Article
- The build-up of dominance hierarchies in eusocial insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- The genomic basis of army ant chemosensory adaptations.Molecular ecology · 2021Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The selective forces that shape and maintain eusocial societies are an enduring puzzle in evolutionary biology. Ordinarily sterile workers can usually reproduce given the right conditions, so the factors regulating reproductive division of labour may provide insight into why eusociality has persisted over evolutionary time. Queen-produced pheromones that affect worker reproduction have been implicated in diverse taxa, including ants, termites, wasps and possibly mole rats, but to date have only been definitively identified in the honeybee. Using the black garden ant Lasius niger, we isolate the first sterility-regulating ant queen pheromone. The pheromone is a cuticular hydrocarbon that comprises the majority of the chemical profile of queens and their eggs, and also affects worker behaviour, by reducing aggression towards objects bearing the pheromone. We further show that the pheromone elicits a strong response in worker antennae and that its production by queens is selectively reduced following an immune challenge. These results suggest that the pheromone has a central role in colony organization and support the hypothesis that worker sterility represents altruistic self-restraint in response to an honest quality signal.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.