Responsiveness to cold snaps by turtle embryos depends on exposure timing and duration

Characterizing how organisms respond to transient temperatures may further our understanding of their susceptibility to climate change. Past studies in the freshwater turtle, Trachemys scripta, have demonstrated that the timing and duration of heat waves can have major implications for the response of genes involved in gonadal development and the production of female hatchlings. Yet, no study has considered how the response of these genes to transient cold snap exposure may affect gonadal development and the production of males. We investigated how cold snap timing affects gonadal gene expression in T. scripta embryos and how the duration of an early cold snap influences resulting hatchling sex ratios. Results show that responsiveness to cold changes rapidly across development, such that genes that responded when exposure began on incubation day 14 responded differently when exposure occurred just 4 or 8 days later. Sex ratio data revealed that embryos experiencing an early cold snap al..., , , # Responsiveness to cold snaps by turtle embryos depends on exposure timing and duration

## Description of the Data and file structure

The Excel data file has two sheets corresponding to each of the two experiments conducted. The first sheet contains gene expression values of multiple genes as obtained from biological (embryonic gonads) samples in experiment #1. The second sheet contains sex ratio data collected from experiment #2. Each sheet also contains information on the treatment and sampling point of each individual analyzed.

Sheet \"Gene_Expression_Data\" headers:

* Sample Name: an arbitrary but unique number assigned randomly to the collected tissue samples (not used in data analysis)
* Egg ID: identifies individual T. scripta eggs (i.e., embryos) used in study
* Trt: the treatment applied to that egg; indicates whether an individual was swapped to cold snap conditions on incubation day 14, 18, or 22
* Sampling Point: indicates when (per treatment) that an egg was samp...