DOI: 10.5061/dryad.m905qfvcs
title: Heat tolerance in tropical Lepidoptera varies with microclimate, life stage, and larval feeding strategy

description: Understanding heat tolerance variation and its drivers is crucial for
 predicting climate change impacts on biodiversity. While most studies
 focus on adults and macroclimate effects on heat tolerance, how
 microclimate shapes heat tolerance variation across life stages and
 feeding strategies remain largely untested. We quantified heat tolerance
 (Critical Thermal Maximum: CTmax) variation in 35 species of moth larvae
 (caterpillars) within a seasonal tropical forest. For 17 species we were
 also able to measure the CTmax of adults. We tested how seasonal
 macroclimate and life stage-specific microclimate drove CTmax variation
 across life stages, and how feeding strategy-specific microclimate drove
 CTmax variation in caterpillars. We found strong seasonal effects, with
 caterpillars and adults exhibiting higher CTmax in the hot season.
 Caterpillars exhibited higher CTmax than conspecific adults in the cool
 season, but this pattern was reversed in the hot season. Shelter-building
 caterpillars experiencing cooler microclimates exhibited lower CTmax than
 free-living caterpillars. Our study highlights the complex drivers of heat
 tolerance and the importance of microclimate in shaping heat tolerance
 variation across life stages and feeding strategies.
description: # Thermal environment shapes life stage variation of heat tolerance in a
 tropical Lepidoptera community Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.m905qfvcs](10.5061/dryad.m905qfvcs) ## Description of the
 data and file structure The dataset included a heat tolerance (CTmax) and
 body size (thorax width) data of Lepidoptera larvae (caterpillars) and
 adults collected from a seasonal evergreen tropical rainforest during
 Apr-May (Hot season) and Nov-Dec (Cool season) in 2019, 2020, 2024.  CTmax
 was measured with water bath (Grant-TXF200) at the ramping rate of 0.2
 celsius per minute. Both caterpillar and adults (reared from caterpillars)
 are reared in the lab at the correponding temperate regime during the
 period of collection. The criteria for CTmax measurements in both
 caterpillar and adults are complete stop of movements of appendages ###
 Files and variables This archive file includes R codes used for our
 analysis, excel file that contained the data used, and a phylogenetic tree
 stored in txt format.   The excel file contains three sheets, with name of
 each correspond to the name of csv file mentioned in R code. Specifically,
 sheet *CTmax3lar* contains caterpillar CTmax data, sheet *CTmax3_con*
 contains both caterpillar and adult moth CTmax data, and sheet *CTmax4*
 contains additional taxonmic information together with CTmax that used to
 test the phylogenetic signal in CTmax. In sheet *CTmax3lar*, column width
 represents body width (in mm), mobility represents whether species are
 free-living or building leaf-shelters. In sheet *CTmax3_con*, additional
 column name stage is included to represent whether the CTmax were from
 caterpillars or adults. In sheet *CTmax4*, column ID is the orginal
 species name, column species is the updated species name from taxonomic
 correction. column speciesmoth indicated whether this species was included
 in the phylogenetic tree (in this column, species not the phylogenetic
 tree were left blank)