Fig. 2

Differential expression of male sex differentiating genes. A—F Left panel: Log₂ normalised read counts for six vertebrate sex-related genes (top of each panel) are plotted for all samples (green: ZW, orange: ZZ) over all stages (given at the bottom of the graph). The averages of all samples per sex and stage are presented as graphs, connected to the adult stage by dotted lines to acknowledge the much larger difference in time. The significance of the difference between ZW and ZZ is given for each stage on top of the graph as obtained from the differential expression analysis (adjusted p-value: * < 0.05, ** < 0.005, *** < 0.0005, **** < 0.00005, n.s. > 0.05). Middle and right panels: Histograms of log₁₀ normalised read counts per gene (as obtained from the default normalisation of the DESeq2 R package) per kb transcript length (nRPK) for stage 6/7 (middle panel) and adults (right panel). The stage average nRPK for each gene (as in left panel) is indicated with a green or orange line for ZW or ZZ, respectively, for stage 6/7, stage 16 and for adults