High temperatures reduce growth, infection, and transmission of a naturally occurring fungal plant pathogen

Climate change is rapidly altering the distribution of suitable habitats for many species as well as their pathogenic microbes. For many pathogens, including vector-borne diseases of humans and agricultural pathogens, climate change is expected to increase transmission and lead to pathogen range expansions. However, if pathogens have a lower heat tolerance than their host, increased warming could generate ‘thermal refugia’ for hosts. Predicting the outcomes of warming on disease transmission requires detailed knowledge of the thermal tolerances of both the host and the pathogen. Such thermal tolerance studies are generally lacking for fungal pathogens of wild plant populations, despite the fact that plants form the base of all terrestrial communities. Here, we quantified three aspects of the thermal tolerance (growth, infection, and propagule production) of the naturally occurring fungal pathogen Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae, which causes a sterilizing anther-smut disease on the herba..., Data was collected in three separate sets of expeirments:
1) In vitro assays of pathogen germination, growth, and conjugation in growth chambers set to different temperature
2) Greenhouse inoculaiton expeirment of S. latifolia seedlings at different temperature treatments
3) A field experiment, where diseased plants were monitored for signs of heat-curing over the course of one summer field season., , # High temperatures reduce growth, infection, and transmission of a naturally occurring fungal plant pathogen

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4mw6m90jv](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4mw6m90jv)

A series of three experiments were carried out using the fungal pathogen *Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae* and its host plant *Silene latifolia* in the manuscript: 1) in vitro assays of fungal germination, growth and conjugation under different temperatures in a growth chamber, 2) in planta assay of infection rate at different inoculation temperatures, and 3) disease expression of infected plants in the field from May to November.   

## Description of the data and file structure

There are 12 separate data files associated with this manuscript and 7 r-files for analysis.  We have organized them according to the three experiments reported in the paper.  Data files are typically in csv text files.  In some cases they are stored as xls files with two sheets: One containing the data, and one a read...