Data from: Rapid cold hardening protects against sublethal freezing injury in an Antarctic insect

• Main Authors: Teets, Nicholas M., Kawarasaki, Yuta, Potts, Leslie J, Benjamin, Philip N., Gantz, Josiah D., Denlinger, David L., Jr., Richard E. Lee
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2019
• Subjects: freeze-tolerance; Belgica antarctica; Antarc*; Antarctic; Antarctic midge; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.29p7ng2

Rapid cold hardening (RCH) is a type of beneficial phenotypic plasticity that occurs on extremely short time scales (minutes to hours) to enhance insects' ability to cope with cold snaps and diurnal temperature fluctuations. RCH has a well-established role in extending lower lethal limits, but its ability to prevent sublethal cold injury has received less attention. The Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica is Antarctica's only endemic insect and has a well-studied RCH response that extends freeze tolerance in laboratory conditions. However, the discriminating temperatures used in previous studies of RCH are far below those ever experienced in the field. Here, we tested the hypothesis that RCH protects against nonlethal freezing injury. Larvae of B. antarctica were exposed to either control (2&[deg]C), direct freezing (-9&[deg]C for 24 h), or RCH (-5&[deg]C for 2 h followed by -9&[deg]C for 24 h). All larvae survived both freezing treatments, but RCH larvae recovered more quickly from freezing stress and had significantly higher metabolic rates during recovery. RCH larvae also sustained less damage to fat body and midgut tissue and had lower expression of two heat shock protein transcripts (hsp60 and hsp90), which is consistent with RCH protecting against protein denaturation. The protection afforded by RCH resulted in energy savings; directly frozen larvae experienced a significant depletion in glycogen energy stores that was not observed in RCH larvae. Together, these results provide strong evidence that RCH protects against a variety of sublethal freezing injuries and allows insects to rapidly fine-tune their performance in thermally variable environments. Raw data for "Rapid cold hardening protects against sublethal freezing injury in an Antarctic insect" 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. Teets et al JEB data.xlsx Funding provided by: National Science ...