College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Term of Award

Fall 2026

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biology (M.S.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Biology

Committee Chair

Stephen Greiman

Committee Member 1

Stephen Greiman

Committee Member 2

Dmitry Apanaskevich

Committee Member 3

Josh Gibson

Abstract

Shrews in the genus Sorex, found across North America and Eurasia, host a great diversity of tapeworms from the family Hymenolepididae; in total there are 14 genera known in North America. Despite notably high parasite diversity and wide distribution, comprehensive sampling efforts to document parasites of Sorex spp. are rare in the Southeastern USA. To date, only 1 study has been done in North Carolina, finding a diverse community of 7 cestode genera. The present study aimed to understand metacommunity dynamics of tapeworms from Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in Macon County, North Carolina within Sorex shrews in response to biotic (host species, sex, reproductive class) and abiotic (precipitation, temperature, elevation) factors. Hosts and parasites were collected seasonally across 2025. Cestodes were sorted in the lab and identified to genus level based on both morphology and/or 28S rDNA sequences and counted to obtain abundance data. Elements of Metacommunity Structure (EMS) framework was implemented in R to analyze the structure of the metacommunity, a Generalized Boosted Regression (GBM) model was built to infer relative influences of various explanatory variables on metacommunity position across the ordination axis. Taxon-specific responses were investigated using Generalized Additive Models with both presence/absence and count data as responses. The diversity between communities was investigated using Sørensen and Bray-Curtis family beta diversity calculations for presence/absence and count data, respectively, after which association with explanatory factors were tested through PERMANOVAs. Cestode infections were overwhelmingly common, with only a 7 out of 115 individuals being uninfected, and mean (range) intensities of infection varied from 0–13,543. The parasite diversity was similar to the only previous survey in North Carolina, but included an additional genus not previously known from the state. The EMS framework revealed a coherent metacommunity indicative of Clementsian community structure. The metacommunity order identified was associated with both biotic (host weight) and abiotic (elevation, precipitation, slope, and aspect) factors. Similarly, complex taxon-specific multivariate drivers of both prevalence and abundance were identified for individual taxa. Beta dissimilarity indices supported multiple drivers of diversity across the metacommunity.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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