Fig. 4.

a, b Venn diagrams showing overlap of genes differentially expressed exclusively in A. alata medusa samples (gastric cirri, ovaries, tentacle, rhopalium). a Shows that of the 2916 total genes differentially expressed across the four samples 2228 (76 %) are expressed in all samples, 24 are unique to gastric cirri, 4 are unique to ovaries, 38 are unique to the tentacle, and 24 are unique to the rhopalium. b Shows that of the top 50 most highly differentially expressed genes by sample type, a single gene is expressed in all four samples. The subset of genes unique to the top 50 most abundant genes by sample, called the “core genes” herein, comprises 46 genes in the gastric cirri, 33 in the ovaries, 34 in the tentacle (and pedalium base), and 20 in the rhopalium. Core gene annotations provided in Additional file 6 and summarized in histograms Fig. 6a-d