The School of Biological Sciences Fall 2025 Seminar Series presents Dr. Meghan Duffy

Abstract: Symbionts can have myriad impacts on their hosts, with the net outcome (parasitism, commensalism, or mutualism) impacted by ecological context, timescale, and level of biological organization. In this talk, I will present the results of a series of studies taking advantage of a tractable and ecologically important system: the freshwater zooplankton Daphnia and their microbial symbionts. I will first present the results of a field study indicating shifts of a common microsporidian symbiont from parasitism towards mutualism. Then, I will present results of two different experiments aimed at understanding the factors driving the impacts of symbionts on host individuals and populations.