Thermal Stress Responses in Social Spiders from Southern Africa

Kirsten Gade Malmos of Aarhus University published a dataset on behavioural and physiological responses to heat stress in the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola. The data likely contains measurements from a common garden experiment comparing populations from warmer and cooler temperature niches across Southern Africa. It includes results on heat tolerance exceeding 49°C, cuticle wax composition, and behavioural escape thresholds.

Use Cases

• Modeling local adaptation based on population-level differences in heat tolerance.
• Analyzing phenotypic plasticity based on acclimation temperature effects on cuticle wax composition.
• Studying behavioural thermoregulation based on escape response thresholds to simulated lethal temperatures.
• Investigating the Bogert-effect hypothesis based on the co-occurrence of behavioural and physiological adaptations.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a controlled common garden experimental design.
• Includes a specific, high heat tolerance measurement surpassing 49°C.
• Examines multiple adaptive traits (behavioural thermoregulation and cuticle wax composition) for a synergistic analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the specific Southern African study populations.

Provenance

Source

Aarhus University

Collection Method

Common garden experiment with spiders collected from different climate zones in Southern Africa.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Southern Africa