Fig. 7
Dynamic sizes and locations of GFCs throughout the asexual life cycle. a Graph depicting the mean percentage (y-axis) of germ cells in the primary (pn; gray solid line) and secondary bud (sb; black dashed line) niches at each stage of the blastogenic cycle (x-axis) in juvenile Botryllus. Each point represents an average from three colonies, with error bars showing the standard deviation of these values. b Graph displaying GFC sizes (blue open circles, left y-axis with logarithmic scale) and the percentage of GFCs with ≤10 cells (red bars; right y-axis) at each stage of the blastogenic cycle in juvenile Botryllus. Dots representing GFCs with similar sizes are offset horizontally to prevent overplotting. The horizontal dashed line corresponds to a GFC size of ten cells. c Graph depicting the percentage of germ cells (y-axis) associated with the primary bud (pb; blue long-dashed line), zooid (z; red two-dashed line), vasculature (v; black short-dashed line), and tunic (t; green solid line) at each stage of the blastogenic cycle (x-axis) in juvenile Botryllus. d Graph depicting the log 2 of one plus the ratio of the number of germ cells on the right side of a primary bud to the number of germ cells on the left side of a primary bud (y-axis), for 34 individual primary buds (blue open circles) from stage A1 to B2 when most germ cells are localized in the primary bud niche (pn) and stages C1–D, when most germ cells are localized in the secondary bud niche (sb). One was added to each ratio prior to taking the log 2 since some primary buds had no germ cells on their right side. The means of the log 2 ratios were 0.59093 from stage A1 to B2 and 1.9761 from stage C1 to D and are represented by red solid lines. By Student’s t test, the means of these samples differed significantly, with a p value <1.0 × 10−5. The dashed line at y = 1.0 indicates the value at which an equal number of germ cells are present on the right and left sides, with values less than or greater than one indicating more germ cells on the left or right, respectively