Figure 2.

A) Bugulina stolonifera colony and its polymorphs. Adapted from Ryland, 1960 (Fig. 6, pg. 9). Scale bar is 500 µm. Asterisks indicate zooids that were dissected for RNA extraction (three biological replicates each), for a total of 18 samples. B) Eleven B. stolonifera transcriptomes were assembled using the software, Trinity (Haas et al., 2013) resulting in six sample-specific, one reference, and four tissue-specific assemblies. Tissue-specific assemblies include: autozooids (mature autozooids and autozooid buds), avicularia (mature avicularia and avicularium buds), and rhizoids (rhizoid stolons and rhizoid autozooids). Each sample comprised of three biological replicates.