Fig. 3: The effect of chemical cues on ovarian state in relation to contest.

a Amount of compounds deposited on filter paper after rearing pairs of workers for 7 days (n = 6, 6, 8, and 6 for Days 1, 3, 5, and 7, respectively). b Average TOS for individually isolated workers housed in cages provided with a new filter paper (n = 29) or a filter paper from a cage housing pair of workers (n = 28) in Experiment 3a (left panel). c Average TOS of workers reared in pairs in cages with filter papers subjected to chemical additions at different time points in Experiment 3b (left panel): no exposure (n = 13), early exposure (n = 12), and late exposure (n = 10). Yellow or white indicates original filter papers with heavy chemical deposition or new filter papers with no chemical deposition. All data are shown as mean ± SEM. Data in (a) was analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis test (two-tailed) with Dunn’s post-hoc analysis. Data in (b) was analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test (two-tailed). Data in (c) was analyzed by two-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test (two-tailed) using log10-transformed data. Detailed statistical test results and adjusted P-values for multiple comparison were shown in Supplementary Data 1. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.