Fig. 1

Ubiquitous knockdown of rk differentially affects melanization at 3 h and 48 h post emergence. a Representative pictures of the fourth abdominal segment of female control (left) and rk>tBur (right) flies at 3 h (upper panel) and 48 h (lower panel) after emergence. b Quantification of abdominal pigmentation measured in 3-h- (upper panel) and 48-h-old (lower panel) female flies expressing tBur or two different rk RNAi transgenes (RNAi A and RNAi B) under the control of the rk-GAL4 driver (rk>); in rk¹/rk⁴ mutant flies; and in controls. Genotypes are indicated by the combination of squares within each column, and color-coded as follows: blue squares correspond to mutant animals (in this case rk¹/rk⁴), orange squares represent transgenic combinations (e.g., rk>tBur, for the first column), and gray boxes correspond to control genotypes (e.g., GAL4 drivers alone). Boxes mark the first and third quartiles, thick lines mark the medians, and whiskers represent data range. Red dashed line indicates the median pigmentation level of rk mutants and will be used as a visual reference in all figures of this type. Results for each age were compared using a one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey HSD post hoc analysis. Different letters indicate statistically significant differences (one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey HSD, p < 0.01). n = 10 for each group