Matthew Rice Doremus

Matthew Rice Doremus serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology within the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research program investigates heritable microbial symbionts in arthropods, with particular emphasis on reproductive manipulators like Cardinium and Wolbachia.

Dr. Doremus' research centers on endosymbiont-host evolutionary dynamics, specializing in cytoplasmic incompatibility mechanisms, symbiont-mediated sex ratio distortion, and multi-symbiont interaction networks in arthropod systems. His fingerprint analysis reveals dominant expertise in Symbiont Biology (100%), Cardinium research (75%), Cytoplasmic Incompatibility (59%), Aphid systems (43%), and Parasitoid Wasp associations (38%). Current projects examine how coinfecting symbionts collaborate in reproductive manipulation, evolutionary arms races between butterflies and bacteria, and physiological adaptations of widespread endosymbionts in invertebrate hosts.

Recent publications demonstrate strong trends in molecular mechanisms of symbiont-induced phenotypes across diverse arthropod taxa, with increasing focus on transcriptomic and genomic approaches to understand host-symbiont coevolution. His 2025 review in FEMS Microbiology Reviews synthesizes Cardinium's ecological impact across invertebrate systems.

Dr. Doremus actively collaborates with leading researchers including M. S. Hunter, S. Schmitz-Esser, and C. M. Stouthamer on projects spanning insect symbiosis, reproductive biology, and microbial ecology. His laboratory utilizes integrated approaches combining molecular biology, genomics, and experimental evolution to dissect symbiont-host interactions.