Data from: A warmer environment can reduce sociability in an ectotherm ...

• Main Authors: Pilakouta, Natalie, O'Donnell, Patrick, Crespel, Amelie, Levet, Marie, Claireaux, Marion, Humble, Joseph, Kristjansson, Bjarni, Skulason, Skuli, Lindstrom, Jan, Metcalfe, Neil, Killen, Shaun, Parsons, Kevin
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2022
• Subjects: FOS Biological sciences; Iceland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv0v; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv0v

The costs and benefits of being social vary with environmental conditions, so individuals must weigh the balance between these trade-offs in response to changes in the environment. Temperature is a salient environmental factor that may play a key role in altering the costs and benefits of sociality through its effects on food availability, predator abundance, and other ecological parameters. In ectotherms, changes in temperature also have direct effects on physiological traits linked to social behaviour, such as metabolic rate and locomotor performance. In light of climate change, it is therefore important to understand the potential effects of temperature on sociality. Here, we took advantage of a ‘natural experiment’ of threespine sticklebacks from contrasting thermal environments in Iceland: geothermally warmed water bodies (warm habitats) and adjacent ambient-temperature water bodies (cold habitats) that were either linked (sympatric) or physically distinct (allopatric). We first measured the sociability ...