Fig. 1

Reference gene expression levels and stability in different life stages. a Comparison of abundances of reference gene transcripts in six I. ricinus life stages. Each bar represents the geometric mean of Cq values calculated from biological triplicate. b Transcript abundance variation of each reference gene calculated for six I. ricinus life stages. Individual box plot elements represent the following variables: line, median; boxes, upper and lower quartile; whiskers, range of the dataset