Fig. 5.

Relative expression of differentially expressed genes shows that many genes are differentially expressed in all four stages. Heatmap shows relative expression at each stage for genes represented in two or more durophage or scale-biter intersection sets. The overall pattern of relative expression trends to be similar at all four stages for this set of genes indicating constitutive differential expression. For instance, genes over- or underexpressed in the scale-biter tend to also be over- or underexpressed at other stages as well. Boxplots show expression patterns for three representative genes that may also be relevant to skull morphology based on function. Note how the pattern of expression for igfbp2, igfbp5 is similar across all four stages even when the species-wide mean expression changes across stages, while the interleukin 12 receptor paralog, il12rb2-like, is greatly overexpressed in the scale-biter at embryonic stages, but not at post-hatching stages