Agriculture Commons^™

A Tangled Web: The Dynamics Of Endosymbiotic Infections In A Linyphiid Spider, Laura Cecilia Rosenwald

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

Many arthropods are infected with bacterial endosymbionts that manipulate host reproduction, but few bacterial taxa have been shown to cause such manipulations. Mermessus fradeorum (Linyphiidae) is a sheet-weaving spider that displays both feminization and cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). To correlate reproductive manipulations to endosymbionts, I surveyed the bacterial community of M. fradeorum using high throughput sequencing and found that individuals can be infected with up to five different strains of bacteria from the genera Wolbachia, Rickettsia, and Rickettsiella. Rickettsiella was found in all 23 tested spider matrilines. I used antibiotic curing to generate uninfected matrilines that I reciprocally crossed with …