Data from: Simulated winter warming negatively impacts survival of Antarctica’s only endemic insect ...

• Main Authors: Devlin, Jack, Unfried, Laura, Lecheta, Melise C., McCabe, Eleanor A., Gantz, Josiah D., Kawarasaki, Yuta, Elnitsky, Michael A., Hotaling, Scott, Michel, Andrew P., Convey, Peter, Hayward, Scott A. L., Teets, Nicholas M.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2022
• Subjects: FOS Earth and related environmental sciences; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctic midge; Antarctica; Belgica antarctica
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d7wm37q3k; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.d7wm37q3k

Antarctic winters are challenging for terrestrial invertebrates, and species that live there have specialized adaptations to conserve energy and protect against cold injury in the winter. However, rapidly occurring climate change in these regions will increase the unpredictability of winter conditions, and there is currently a dearth of knowledge on how the highly adapted invertebrates of Antarctica will respond to changes in winter temperatures. We evaluated the response of larvae of the Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica, to simulated winters at three ecologically relevant mean temperature scenarios: Warm (-1 °C), Normal (-3 °C) and Cold (-5 °C). Within each scenario, larvae were placed into three distinct habitat types in which they are commonly observed (decaying organic matter, living moss, and Prasiola crispa algae). Following the simulated overwintering period, a range of physiological outcomes were measured, namely survival, locomotor activity, tissue damage, energy store levels and molecular stress ... : An excel spreadsheet of raw data used to generate the figures and analyses in our paper. Data are organized into tabs, with each tab containing the data for a single experiment. ...