Fig. 5
From: Stability in gene expression and body-plan development leads to evolutionary conservation
Stable developmental stages tended to be more conserved in the hybrid descendants Analyzing whole embryonic transcriptomes, we evaluated the stability for the four developmental stages in F0 generation, in terms of the variance in gene expression between pairs of siblings (a). Evolutionary diversity in the hybrid F3 embryos was evaluated using transcriptomic data, comparing all possible embryonic pairs within the same stages (b). The numbers of pairs used are shown on the right of each panel. A Kruskal–Wallis test (P values were shown below the panels) followed by multiple comparisons using the Steel–Dwass test suggested that, for the F0 generation, stage 28 exhibited significantly less phenotypic variation than the other stages (stage 15 vs. 23.5, P = 4.1 × 10−1; stage 15 vs. 28, P = 2.2 × 10–2; stage 15 vs. hatching, P = 1.8 × 10–1; stage 23.5 vs. 28, P = 2.6 × 10–1; stage 23.5 vs. hatching, P = 4.9 × 10–2; stage 28 vs. hatching, P = 4.2 × 10−3). Similarly, in the F3 descendants, stage 28 showed significantly less phenotypic diversity than the earlier and later stages (stage 15 vs. 23.5, P = 8.3 × 10–1; stage 15 vs. 28, P = 1.8 × 10−3; stage 15 vs. hatching, P = 9.5 × 10−1; stage 23.5 vs. 28, P = 1.6 × 10−1; stage 23.5 vs. hatching, P = 1.0, stage 28 vs. hatching, P = 7.2 × 10−4). Box plots: center line, median; limits, upper and lower quartiles; whiskers, 1.5 × interquartile range; points, outliers