Figure 3.

Spermathecal fluid proteins in virgin and mated queens. A graphical comparison of the spermathecal proteins detected in our study. The black bars show the total number of proteins that were detected in both virgin and mated queens as well as the number of proteins detected in virgins or mated queens only. The number of spermathecal proteins that were also found in seminal fluid and sperm are shown by grey and white bars, respectively. Half of the spermathecal proteins (50%) were found in mated as well as virgin queens, although subsets of proteins were unique for mated (30%) and virgin queens (20%). Overlaps of spermathecal proteins with those reported for sperm and seminal fluid [19] were generally low and are shown by the grey and white bars, respectively.