Non-linear interactive effects of pollution and temperature variation on growth are driven by diversity within a ciliate species

This dataset contains the raw and processed data used to investigate the reciprocal, non-linear, and strain-specific interactions between temperature and three pollutants (copper sulfate, sodium chloride, and chloramphenicol) in the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. Six genetically distinct strains (D3, D8, D10, D16, D19, D21) were exposed to fully crossed gradients of eight temperatures (11–39°C) and eight concentrations of each pollutant. Population growth rates were measured over time and used to estimate IC50 values and thermal niche parameters (thermal optimum, niche width, and performance at optimum). The dataset includes growth rate measurements, IC50 estimates with standard errors, thermal niche parameter estimates with standard deviations, and the R scripts used for statistical analyses and figure generation. These data support the findings that temperature–pollutant interactions are bidirectional and non-linear, and that intraspecific variability substantially modulates the responses. The dataset is organised as Grrowth_data.text file containing all growth rate measurements, a IC50_data.txt file with derived IC50, Niches_parameters_data.txt and pilot experiment data.