Spider Fitness Costs from Wolbachia Feminization, 16% Fewer Eggs

Experimental data on fitness costs associated with a feminizing Wolbachia endosymbiont in the spider Mermessus fradeorum. The dataset, authored by Jordyn D. Robinson and last updated in April 2026, compares fecundity and offspring development across different symbiont co-infections. Eggmasses infected with the feminizing Wolbachia had 16% fewer eggs and a 20% egg development failure rate.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the impact of feminizing Wolbachia on host fecundity based on egg count data.
• Studying offspring viability costs associated with reproductive manipulation based on development failure rates.
• Comparing fitness effects across different symbiont co-infection combinations mentioned in the description.
• Investigating the hypothesis linking reduced egg viability to inviable 00 zygotes in XX/X0 sex determination systems.

Strengths

• Quantifies a specific 16% reduction in egg count for infected eggmasses.
• Reports a concrete 20% egg development failure rate for the feminizing Wolbachia, compared to 4% in other symbiotypes.
• Data is associated with a specific, testable biological hypothesis regarding zygote viability.

Limitations

• Dataset is very small at 119.6 KB, indicating limited scope.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for statistical modeling.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Experimental measurements from a study on spider symbiont co-infections.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 05:40:33; freshness should be verified.