Data from: Temperature effects on interspecific eavesdropping in the wild

Mating signals are targets of conspecific signal recognition and sexual
selection, but are also subject to abiotic temperature effects and to
biotic interspecific eavesdroppers. In crickets, the male calling song
becomes faster at warmer temperatures, and female crickets’ recognition of
male song tracks temperature in a coordinated manner, termed ‘temperature
coupling’. But female crickets are not the only ecologically relevant
listeners: some cricket species are parasitized by Ormia ochracea, a
parasitoid fly which finds its cricket hosts by eavesdropping on male
cricket song. How temperature affects parasitoid fly phonotaxis to song is
largely unexplored, with only one previous study conducted under field
conditions. Here we explore six possible patterns of thermal effects on
fly responses to cricket song, including temperature coupling, using field
playbacks of synthetic Gryllus lineaticeps songs designed to be
species-typical at various temperatures. We find that temperature does
affect fly response, but that the temperature deviation of songs from
ambient does not impact numbers of flies caught. We extend this finding by
comparing the temperatures of the air and ground to show that temperature
coupling is unlikely to be effective given microhabitat variation and
differential rates of cooling in the evening hours when flies are most
active. Our results can be interpreted more broadly to suggest temperature
effects on intraspecific communication systems may be more tightly coupled
than are effects on interspecific eavesdropping, and variation in thermal
microhabitats in the field make it difficult to translate laboratory
physiological responses to natural selection in the wild.