Fig. 4

The relationship between cell types and nuclear size (a proxy of ploidy level) in the fat body of R. speratus. A Under DIC, adipocytes can be discriminated from urocytes, because adipocytes were not surrounded by urate spherules. Nuclei of both types of cells were stained and visualized by Hoechst 33,342. White arrowheads indicate representative nuclei of adipocytes (enclosed by white dashed lines). Red arrows indicate urocyte nuclei (enclosed by red dashed lines). B Size distribution of nuclei of adipocytes and urocytes in the fat body of worker, nymph, and immature and mature nymphoid queens. Violin plots showing the distribution of the size (area) of nuclei. Box plots show the median (center line), 75th percentiles (top of box), and 25th percentiles (bottom of box), and whiskers connect the largest and smallest values within 1.5 interquartile ranges. The red diamonds indicate mean size of each category. Dots are individual values. Different letters indicate significant differences among means in each comparison group (Tukey’s HSD test, p < 0.05)