Fig 1.
Developmental pathways in termites.
Developmental pathways in termites with different degrees of sociality. (A) Typical developmental pathway for a termite with high degree of sociality, e.g. Macrotermes bellicosus (foraging termites). The development is less flexible and the immature workers are not totipotent. Early on during development (here in the egg stage) caste fate is determined. Individuals can either develop along the apterous line into workers and soldiers or along the nymphal line into primary reproductives. Arrows indicate the transition of one stage to another; in white: the default nymphal line which occurs in all insects, in black: deviations from these trajectories, specific to termites. (B) Typical developmental pathway for a termite with low degree of sociality, e.g. Cryptotermes secundus (wood-dwelling termites). Termite workers are totipotent immatures that can develop into soldiers or two kinds of reproductives, primary or neotenic reproductives. They also can molt regressively (arrow pointing backwards).
Fig 2.
Principal component analysis of transcript count data.
Principal component analysis of transcript count data with variance stabilizing transformation for two age classes of reproductives and workers.
Fig 3.
Venn diagram of differentially expressed transcripts.
Shared differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) with age (old vs. young) between C. secundus queens (Q), kings (K) and workers (W). Blue: old queens vs young queens, yellow: old kings vs young kings and green: old workers vs young workers.
Fig 4.
Venn diagrams and heatmaps of differentially expressed transcripts.
Shared differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) with age (old vs young) between C. secundus queens (Q), kings (K) and workers (W). The heatmaps depict the log2fold changes in expression within castes, only DETs. Each row corresponds to a DET and each column to a caste. NS: differential expression not significant (padj>0.05); transcripts in bold are discussed in the text. Roman numerals link the DETs shared between castes to the heatmaps. (A) DETs more highly expressed in young compared to old individuals (HY). (B) DETs more highly expressed in old compared to young individuals (HO). In Venn diagrams, blue: old queens vs young queens, yellow: old kings vs young kings and green: old workers vs young workers.
Table 1.
Comparison of GO enriched terms between species.