Fig. 1

Temporal opsin expression during pupal development of workers and drones. a,c: Relative mRNA expression levels of the ultraviolet (UVop), blue (BLop) and green (Lop1) opsin in the compound eyes during pupal development of workers (a; pupal stages: P1-P8) and drones (c; P1-P9; only the dorsal part of the compound eye: grey area of the retina marked in the inset; note that the pupal phase of drones is one day longer than in workers) by means of qPCR. Expression level for each opsin gene was normalized to the reference gene Rp49, and the level of newly emerged bees was set to one (NE; see Fig. 2). b,d: Relative proportion of opsin mRNA expression in workers (b) and drones (d) at different pupal stages. For calculation, see [55]. Error bars indicate standard deviation