Results
We detected that mating triggers SFP replenishment in two SFP genes.LyAcp5 ’s expression level significantly increased 48 hours after mating, and reduced 192 hours after mating (ANOVA,F 3,11 = 5.61, P = 0.014, Fig. 1, Table 1). Also, LyAcp8b showed a significant change in expression level over time (ANOVA, F 3,11 = 4.18, P = 0.033, Fig. 1, Table 1), which is likely due to the increased expression 48 hours after mating (Tukey HSD test, 48 h - 3 h: adjusted P = 0.054, 48 h – 24 h: adjusted P = 0.057). In contrast, the four remaining SFP genes did not show a significant change in expression level throughout our monitoring, suggesting that the production of these SFPs did not increase after mating (Fig. 1, Table 1).
In order to visualize the overall change in SFP gene expression, we conducted a PCA and the patterns showed that half of expression variation is explained by the factor Hour after mating (PC1, 50.0 % explained, Table 2), although we did not detect a significant difference between treatments for this component (ANOVA,F 3,11 = 2.73, P = 0.095, Fig. S2, Table S2). In contrast, PC2 seemingly explained the difference between SFP genes (PC2: 26.5 % explained, Fig. S2, Table 2). Although it is only close to statistical significance, this component tended to differ across Hours after mating (ANOVA, F 3,11 = 3.50,P = 0.053, Table S2).