Regional and fine-scale local adaptation in salinity tolerance in Daphnia inhabiting contrasting clusters of inland saline waters

Freshwater salinisation is an important threat to biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and the provision of ecosystem services. Therefore, understanding the capacity of species to adapt to salinity gradients is crucial. Clusters of naturally saline habitats represent ideal test cases to study the extent and scale of local adaptation to salinisation. We studied local genetic adaptation of the water flea Daphnia magna, a key component of pond food webs, to salinity in two contrasting landscapes - a dense cluster of sodic bomb crater ponds and a larger-scale cluster of soda pans. We show regional differentiation in salinity tolerance reflecting the higher salinity levels of soda pans versus bomb crater ponds. We found local adaptation to differences in salinity levels at the scale of tens of metres among bomb crater pond populations but not among geographically more distant soda pan populations. The population-level salinity tolerance range was reduced in more saline bomb crater ponds thro..., , , # Data from: Regional and fine-scale local adaptation in salinity tolerance in Daphnia inhabiting contrasting clusters of inland saline waters

Brief summary

The data package contains two datasets:

* Brans_et_al_data_2024_raw.csv
* Brans_et_al_data_2024_EC50 and environmental variables.csv

Datasets of the recorded variables

(1) Brans_et_al_data_2024_raw.csv
This dataset contains information on the survival of Daphnia magna after 24 and 48 hours of exposure to the experimental salinity levels. For details on the experiment, sampling, and sample processing, see Brans et al. (2024).

Variable names with descriptions:
*pond type: type of original habitat of the Daphnia populations, i.e. soda pan (SP) or bomb crater pond (BC).
*pop: The ID of the pond of origin of each Daphnia population. IDs of bomb crater ponds are numbers given by the authors at the first mapping of all ponds in 2014. Abbreviations for soda pans: APME - Apetloner Meierhoflacke, HERR - Herrnsee, MSTI - Mittlerer ...