Honest signal or active manipulation? Strategies of ant queens to dominate reproduction

From EESwiki

Ant workers are able to reproduce, but in most species they do not contribute to reproduction. Behavioral experiments on the North American ant Temnothorax longispinosus demonstrated that workers show a deviant chemical profile when a queen is present in the nest. The presence of these chemicals is independent of the reproductive condition of workers: The question arises whether queens suppress worker reproduction actively or signal their fertility. We will conduct behavioral experiments and chemical analyzes to investigate how the queens influence worker fertility.