Fig. 5: RNERO acts as an airborne signal and inhibits the development of new queens from female nymphs without physical contact with its source.
From: Identification of a queen primer pheromone in higher termites
a Design of queen inhibition experiment with colonies H and I. b and e Cumulative numbers of new NQs in solvent control and under different treatments. Highly significant overall differences among all curves (Mantel–Cox test; colony H: χ2 = 10.96, df = 2, p = 4.2 × 10−3; colony I: χ2 = 13.16, df = 2, p = 1.4 × 10−3) were due to significant differences of 10NQ and 10QE# treatments from the control. Different lowercase letters indicate significant differences at α = 0.05 corrected using Sidak correction for multiple comparisons (pairwise Mantel–Cox test comparisons of all curves). c and f Median numbers (and quartiles) of new NQs per one experimental group, showing significant overall differences (KW rank-sum test; colony H: H = 9.62, groups = 3, n = 15, p = 6 × 10−3; colony I: H = 9.56, groups = 3, n = 15, p = 6 × 10−3). Different lowercase letters indicate significant pairwise differences at α = 0.05 in Dunn’s Multiple Comparison Test. d and g Pie charts show the numbers of NY4 found in the colonies (pie size) and the proportion of males among NY4. Left columns show proportions of sexually (sex) and parthenogenetically (asex) produced NY4♀ in the genotyped subset of females that entered the experiment. Right column shows the proportion of sexually and parthenogenetically produced NQs that developed in the experiment.
