Fig. 4: Near constant volume fold change per larval stage for L2 to L4.

a Scatter plot of volume at larval stage entry vs. volume at larval stage exit shown as % deviation from the mean for indicated larval stages. Colour indicates point density. Red dots are a moving average along x-axis ±SEM. Red trendline: robust linear regression to the data (see methods). Slope ±95% CI of the trendline is indicated above the panels. Thin red lines indicate 95% CI of the fitted model. b Same as (a), but for volume at larval stage entry vs. absolute volume increase per larval stage. c Same as (a), but for volume at larval stage entry vs. volume fold change per larval stage. d Same as (a), but for growth rate vs. larval stage duration. e Illustration of compensated folder. Grey lines: volume as a function of time of the L3 stage of all individuals of one experimental repeat. Two highlighted individuals (red and green) with similar starting volume, but different growth rates reach the same volume at the end of the larval stage. f Same as (e), but highlighting two individuals with similar growth rates, but distinct starting volumes that maintain the same relative volume difference at the start and end of the larval stage. g Comparison of CV of volume of four simulations (see text for details) with experimental observations as indicated. Blue box plot shows the CVs from n = 10 biologically independent experiments. Other colors show CVs from 1,000 simulations by randomized reshuffling as described in the text. p-value for model vs. data of CV (volume) at M4 (ANOVA, Tukey–Kramer multiple testing correction, two-sided): <10⁻¹², 3*10⁻¹², 0.0039, 0.1583 (for purple, cyan, red, green). Boxplots: central line: median, box: interquartile ranges (IQR), whisker: ranges except extreme outliers (>1.5*IQR).