Fig. 2

a Progress to Emo after sperm depletion (quiescent oocytes in green, Emo in red, the gap junctions between oocytes and sheath cells in blue). D: distal, P: proximal, Sp.: Spermatheca, Ut.: Uterus. b Representative images of DIC (left) and DAPI staining (right) of oocytes (rectangles: quiescent oocytes, polygons: oocytes, arrows: Emo). The images represent 84 gonad images of wild-type, 9 gonads of 62 h of tbh-1, 5 gonads of tdc-1, 94 gonads of 89 h of tbh-1, 77 gonads of tdc-1, 66 gonads of tbh-1 + OA, 66 gonads of tdc-1 + OA. c Representative images of antibody staining of activated MAPK in the proximal oocytes⁴². Staining frequency: 77% for wild-type (n = 35 gonads), 65% for tdc-1 (n = 17 gonads), and 70% for tbh-1 (n = 30 gonads). d Quantification of Emo at 89 h after hatch. Two-sided t-test: p = 0.001 (wild-type (n = 113 animals) vs. wild-type + OA (n = 99 animals)), 0.0003 (wild-type vs. wild-type + NE (n = 109 animals)), 0.0004 (tbh-1 (n = 132 animals) vs. tbh-1 + OA (n = 99 animals)), 0.035 (tbh-1 vs. tbh-1 + NE (n = 111 animals)), 0.001 (tdc-1 (n = 129 animals) vs. tdc-1 + OA (n = 103 animals)), 0.002 (tdc-1 vs. tdc-1 + NE (n = 86 animals)) (*p < 0.05, ** p < 0.005, ***p < 0.001). e A ser-3 mutant shows Emo. Transgenic lines (ser-3 TG, n = 14 gonads) rescue ser-3 mutants (n = 31 gonads). f, g The reproduction periods (f) and the total brood sizes calculated from f (g) of tbh-1 (n = 8 animals, two-sided t-test: p = 0.059), tdc-1 (n = 10 animals, p = 0.003) and ser-3 mutants (n = 9 animals, p = 0.623). p-value is vs. wild type. The mutants and wild-type (n = 8 animals) stop reproducing after 3 days as adults. Boxplots show the median, mean (X), interquartile range (IQR). The upper whisker: the maxima smaller than 1.5 times IQR plus the third quartile, the lower whisker: the minima larger than 1.5 times IQR minus the first quartile. b, c, e Scale bar = 20 μm. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.