Extended Data Fig. 6. Variable contacts obscure the organization of the nerve ring.

a, Cluster analysis of unperturbed membrane contact datasets ${\mathbb{M}}^1$, ${\mathbb{M}}^2$, ${\mathbb{M}}^3$ and ${\mathbb{M}}^4$. Clustering results for membrane contacts predicted to combine core and variable contacts (${\mathbb{M}}^3$) and overwhelmingly variable contacts (${\mathbb{M}}^2$, ${\mathbb{M}}^1$) significantly and increasingly diverge from 5 consensus clusters, indicated by large numbers of small clusters. b, Cluster analysis of (unperturbed) L4 and adult datasets. Both the unperturbed ${\mathbb{M}}^4$ and adult datasets yield 6 clusters rather than the 5 clusters found in the perturbed population models (Figure 1c and Extended Data Fig. 5). The additional cluster results from a split of the taxis cluster into two. This split of the taxis cluster is not observed in either the perturbed ${\mathbb{M}}^4$ or the perturbed Adult dataset, even with half the noise levels observed empirically, indicating that the split is unlikely to be robust across a population of animals. For all cluster frequency matrices: Row and column ordering and colors are the same as the perturbed $\widetilde{{\mathbb{M}}^4}$ population dataset (Extended Data Figure 5i). Matrix element ($i$, $j$) is 1 if cells $i$ and $j$ cluster together and 0 otherwise. Top: dendrogram of the hierarchical clustering.