Filtered phytoplankton movement data

A prerequisite for the survival and reproduction of organisms is to successfully navigate thermal environmental conditions that unfold over time and space. While effective movement behaviour has been highlighted as a key mechanism by which organisms and populations may persist amidst the backdrop of directional environmental warming, it remains unclear how behavioural plasticity may mediate such effects, particularly across timescales that span multiple generations.
Here, we examine the capacity for transgenerational plasticity to alter the movement behaviour of the motile green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in response to changes in thermal conditions.

We first acclimated C. reinhardtii populations to thermal environments near (25°C), below (12.5°C), or above (37.5°C) the temperature range that maximizes population growth rates. Subsequently, we assayed the micro-spatial scale movement behaviour of these populations in thermally homogeneous environments across a period of two weeks...