This demonstrates that the concentration of plasmatocytes is decreased in these larvae coincident with an increase in the concentration of prelamellocytes and lamellocytes, suggesting that Stat92ECA expression in hemocytes is driving the transdifferentiation of plasmatocytes into lamellocytes via the prelamellocyte intermediate stage, as is also observed following parasitoid infection [39] or upon organism-wide JAK-STAT activation [45]. Here, SOAT1 is linked to infection.