Transcriptome of Tribolium castaneum in different climatic conditions

We combined fitness and whole-transcriptome data of Tribolium castaneum to investigate gene expression and fitness responses to drought, heat and their combination. Fitness was reduced by both stressors and their combined effects were nearly additive. Accordingly, expression data showed that both stressors were acting mostly independently and did not interfere physiologically. Response to heat stress resulted in a much higher number of differentially expressed genes compared to drought stress. Responses to heat and heat-drought combination were similar. We used the Tribolium castaneum Cro1 strain collected from a wild population in 2010 and adapted to lab standard conditions (33°C, 70% relative humidity) for more than 20 generations. The conditions in the treatments were: Hot: 37°C and 70% r. h., Dry: 33°C and 30% r. h., Hot-Dry: 37°C and 30% r. h. RNA was extracted from the whole body of reproducing females at the age of eight weeks. mRNA was used for library preparation (using LEXOGEN kit) and single end sequencing was performed on Illumina NextSeq (75 cycles).