Data for: Temperature and intraspecific variation affect host-parasite interactions

Parasites play key roles in regulating aquatic ecosystems, yet the impact
of climate warming on their ecology and disease transmission remains
poorly understood. Isolating the effect of warming is challenging as
transmission involves multiple interacting species and potential
intraspecific variation in temperature responses of one or more of these
species. Here, we leverage a wide-ranging mosquito species and its
facultative parasite as a model system to investigate the impact of
temperature on host-parasite interactions and disease transmission. We
conducted a common garden experiment measuring parasite growth and
infection rates at seven temperatures using 12 field-collected parasite
populations and a single mosquito population. We find that both
free-living growth rates and infection rates varied with temperature,
which were highest at 18-24.5°C and 13°C, respectively. Further, we find
intraspecific variation in peak performance temperature reflecting
patterns of local thermal adaptation—parasite populations from warmer
source environments typically had higher thermal optima for free-living
growth rates. For infection rates, we found a significant interaction
between parasite population and nonlinear effects of temperature. These
findings underscore the need to consider both host and parasite thermal
responses, as well as intraspecific variation in thermal responses, when
predicting the impacts of climate change on disease in aquatic ecosystems.