Acclimation potential of global ectothermic species, collated from literature, 1960 to 2015

A dataset of acclimation potential of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ectotherms across latitudes collected from the literature for the time period 1960 to 2015 in order to test the importance of physiological acclimation as a mechanism to buffer species against climate warming. The projected rate of environmental warming is used to calculate how many years and generations acclimation capacity will afford each species before it will exceed its thermal maximum. Acclimation capacity, generation time, latitudinal range extent and projected rate of warming are then combined into an index of vulnerability. This data together with critical thermal maxima of the ectotherms tested at two or more different acclimation temperatures are presented here.