Fig. 2

Representative whole-mount in situ hybridization expression patterns found for transcripts in Macrostomum lignano that are both phenotypically plastic (sensu ‘social’ RNA-Seq) and tail-limited (sensu ‘positional’ RNA-Seq). Of the 146 transcripts investigated, we obtained tissue-specific expression patterns (visualized by ISH) that can be divided into three categories, namely (a) prostate-limited expression; (b) prostate-specific expression coupled with tissue-specific expression elsewhere in the worm; and (c) tissue-specific expression that did not include the prostate (note that the expression pattern of 10 transcripts could not be established). Note that the classification of the observed expression pattern is based on numerous images of multiple specimens per transcript and not only on the single image shown in this figure (single images can show a somewhat misleading expression pattern because of an overstaining of the specimens or an incomplete discolourisation after the staining process). The ISH patterns depicted here in the main text are for the most highly expressed transcripts in each category; a complete catalogue of ISH images for all 136 transcripts for which we obtained a tissue-specific expression pattern is given in Additional file 1: Figure S1-S3 and the total number of transcripts in each category are given in (d)