Adaptation to urban heat island: tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) [Dataset]

We studied the tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a globally introduced disease vector that is abundant in cities, and exhibits long-distance human-mediated dispersal. This species is abundant in cities but often less so in surrounding rural habitat. Our primary objective was to assess whether thermal traits (larval development, pupal development, pre-emergence mortality, heat tolerance, and cold tolerance) varied with urbanization in the tiger mosquito using a common garden experiment. We reared three urban and three rural populations across five temperatures. All traits were sensitive to rearing temperature, but only cold tolerance was significantly associated with urban versus rural origin. Rural populations had lower cold tolerance when reared at intermediate temperatures. The file "code_submission.R" contains the R script for analyzing and plotting data used for a manuscript. The files "Pupa_data.csv", "Emergence.csv", and "CT.csv" are used in analyses of larval development, pupal development, and critical thermal limits, respectively.