Leaffooted Bug Symbiont Acquisition Delay Impacts on Host Performance

An experimental dataset measures the fitness costs of delayed acquisition of the soil-dwelling bacterial symbiont Caballeronia by Leptoglossus zonatus nymphs. The data includes acquisition success, juvenile survivorship, development time, adult mass, and midgut organ development across seven delay intervals from 0 to 24 days and a negative control. The dataset was authored by Liam T. Sullivan and uploaded to figshare in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between symbiont acquisition delay and host survivorship based on the described experimental treatments.
• Analyzing the impact of symbiont timing on development time and adult mass as described in the experimental results.
• Investigating the development of the midgut symbiotic organ relative to the timing of symbiont acquisition.
• Comparing host performance metrics between delayed acquisition treatments and the immediate (0-day) acquisition control.

Strengths

• Experimental design includes seven distinct symbiont acquisition delay intervals and a negative control, enabling gradient analysis.
• Multiple host performance metrics are measured, including survivorship, development time, mass, and organ morphology.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is small at 2.0 MB, indicating limited scale.

Provenance

Source

Liam T. Sullivan

Collection Method

Controlled laboratory experiment splitting a cohort of Leptoglossus zonatus nymphs among eight treatments with varying symbiont acquisition delays.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 05:34:06