Additional file 1: Figure S4. of The Toll pathway underlies host sexual dimorphism in resistance to both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria in mated Drosophila
Sexual dimorphism in phagocytosis. (A) Confirmation for reduced number of phagocytes in Hml-bax lines. Females from Hml-GFP lines also had more phagocytes than males (Welsh t test: df = 6.66, t = 2.53, P = 0.04). The depletion of phagocytes in Hml-bax was major and removed the sexual dimorphism in counts (Welsh t test: df = 8.13, t = 0.86, P = 0.41). (B) Illustration by confocal microscopy of phagocytosis by P. rettgeri. Host hemocytes constitutively expressed red fluorescence, while the bacteria constitutively expressed green fluorescence. The overlay of the two color channels (red and green) shows that P. rettgeri was phagocytized by the host. (C) Left panel: Counts of phagocytes for pool of 15 females or males. Females have more phagocytes than males (Wilcoxon paired test: n = 8 per lines, V = 238, P = 0.002). One estimate for an Eater female of 1800 hemocytes and was not represented in the figure for a better display of the whole dataset. Right panel: Counts of phagocytes that phagocytized 3 h post-injection of dead E. coli. The number of active phagocytes upon injection of dead Gram-negative bacteria did not significantly differ between the sexes (Linear model (Sex being nested in experimental trials), Sex: df = 1, F = 0.89, P = 0.44). (TIF 221 kb
