Data for: Termites have wider thermal limits to cope with environmental conditions in savannas

The most diverse and abundant family of termites, the Termitidae, evolved in African tropical forests. They have since colonised grassy biomes such as savannas. These open environments have more extreme conditions than tropical forests, notably wider extremes of temperature and lower precipitation levels and greater temporal fluctuations (both annual and diurnal variation). These conditions are challenging for soft-bodied ectotherms, such as termites, to survive in, let alone become as ecologically dominant as termites have.
Here, we quantified termite thermal limits to test the hypothesis that these physiological limits have widened in savanna termite species to facilitate their existence in savanna environments.
We sampled termites directly from mound structures, across an environmental gradient in Ghana, ranging from wet tropical forest through to savanna. At each location we quantified both Critical Thermal Maximum (CTmax) and Critical Thermal Minimum (CTmin) of all the most abundan...