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Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0004-2506-1413

Date Available

8-3-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College

Agriculture, Food and Environment

Department/School/Program

Entomology

Faculty

Jen White

Charles Fox

Abstract

Endosymbiotic bacteria that manipulate the reproduction of their host are abundant in arthropods. Theoretical efforts to model these bacteria have seldom included symbionts that feminize their hosts, and those that do have assumed an environmental sex determination system. Here, I expand upon other theoretical works to model the dynamics of a host population with an XX/X0 sex determination system that contains separate CI and feminization inducing symbionts. I found that coexistence cannot occur without double infection, consistent with previous models. However, I also found that without double infection, the presence of the feminizing symbiont can facilitate the spread of the CI-inducing symbiont when each symbiont spreads very efficiently from mother to offspring, and the effect of each symbiont is very strong. This shows that the dynamic between these two very different effects is not just independent of one another. I then tested the accuracy of the model with empirical findings from population dynamics experiments performed with the spider Mermessus fradeorum, the system that inspired the model. I found that the model accurately predicts the trajectory of both CI and double infections of CI and feminizing symbionts under different sets of environmentally determined parameters. The model typically underestimated the rate at which the symbionts spread over five generations. In the future, this model can be used to predict symbiont spread of feminizing and CI-inducing strains while accounting for the sex determination system of the host. These predictions, paired with empirical observations to scale parameters, can be useful to further understand how the dynamics between these two symbiont types are impacted by different hosts and environmental conditions.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.389

Archival?

Archival

1st Funding Information

U.S National Science Foundation

NSFDEB-BSF: Uneasy alliances: emergent properties and feedback mechanisms among manipulative endosymbiotic communities

1953223

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