Skeeter World 🦟
About
Skeeter World uses Node.js to simulate populations of mosquitoes infected with the bacteria Wolbachia pipientis, which results in a phenomenon called cytoplasmic incompatibility. What does that mean? Basically…
| Uninfected Female | Infected Female | |
|---|---|---|
| Uninfected Male | Uninfected Offspring | Infected Offspring |
| Infected Male | No Offspring | Infected Offspring |
So how does that work? Inside the sperm of an infected male, the Wolbachia bacteria will produce a toxin that will kill the offspring if left unattended. Inside the egg of an infected female, however, that very same bacteria will produce an antidote to that toxin, meaning the offspring of modified sperm can survive! Through this simple toxin-antidote system, Wolbachia has become the single most common reproductive parasite in Earth’s biosphere.
You can learn more about this system by reading “The Toxin-Antidote Model of Cytoplasmic Incompatibility: Genetics and Evolutionary Implications” by Beckmann et al., published in 2019.
You can how this system may have evolved by reading “Modeling emergence of Wolbachia toxin-antidote protein functions with an evolutionary algorithm” by Beckmann et al., published in 2023.