Food quality shapes gradual phenotypic plasticity in ectotherms facing temperature variability

Organisms exhibit reversible physiological adjustments as a response to rapidly changing environments. Yet, such plasticity of the phenotype is gradual and may lag behind the environmental fluctuations, thereby affecting the long-term average performance of the organisms. By supplying energy and essential compounds for optimal tissue building, food determines the range of possible phenotypic changes and potentially the rate at which they occur. Here, we assess how differences in the dietary supply of essential lipids modulate the phenotypic plasticity of an ectotherm facing thermal fluctuations. We use three phytoplankton strains to create a gradient of polyunsaturated fatty acids and sterols supply for Daphnia magna under constant and fluctuating temperatures. We used three different fluctuation periodicities to unravel the temporal dynamics of gradual plasticity and its long-term consequences on D. magna performance measured as juvenile somatic growth rate. In agreement with gradual p..., To obtain the different data, we ran two experiments:
First, Daphnia magna individuals were fed on three different diets and incubated in climate chambers (POL-EKO ST3/3C SMART) with temperature alternating between 20°C and 28°C with 3 different periodicities (every 12 hrs, 24hrs or 48hrs) while trying to keep the same mean temperature and variance across treatments.
Then, in order to have a reference for performance without temperature fluctuations and to model the Thermal Performance Curve (TPC), we additionally grew Daphnia at constant temperatures of 18°C, 20°C, 24°C, 26°C, 28°C and 30°C, fed on the three diets.
We measured for each experiment and condition, the growth rate at day 6 of individuals,
The data were collected in an Excell file and analysed with an R script., R software is required to open the script included with these data files; all the data can be opened with Excel or TableNote., # Supplementary Data\_Food quality shapes gradual phenotypic plasticity in ectotherms facing temperature variability

Journal: Ecology
Authors: Marine Van Baelen, Alexandre Bec, Erik Sperfeld, Nathan Frizot and Apostolos-Manuel Koussoroplis

Date of data collection: 2020-2023
Geographic location of the data collection : LMGE, Universite Clermont Auvergne, France

## Summary and contextualized in experimental procedures and results

Here, you have accesss to all data and code used i the article \"Food quality shapes gradual phenotypic plasticity in ectotherms facing temperature variability\".
We use three phytoplankton strains to create a gradient of polyunsaturated fatty acids and sterols supply for Daphnia magna under constant and fluctuating temperatures. We used three different fluctuation periodicities to unravel the temporal dynamics of gradual plasticity and its long-term consequences on D. magna performance measured as juvenile somatic growth rate. In agreement with gradual plastic...