Whether populations can adapt to predicted climate change conditions, and how rapidly, are critical questions for the management of natural systems. Experimental evolution has become an important tool to answer these questions. In order to provide useful, realistic insights into the adaptive response of populations to climate change, there needs to be careful consideration of how genetic differentiation and phenotypic plasticity interact to generate observed phenotypic changes. We exposed three populations of the widespread copepod Acartia tonsa (Crustacea) to chronic, sub-lethal temperature selection for 15 generations. We generated thermal survivorship curves at regular intervals both during and after this period of selection to track the evolution of thermal tolerance. Using reciprocal transplants between ambient and warming conditions, we also tracked changes in the strength of phenotypic plasticity in thermal tolerance. We observed significant increases in thermal tolerance in the warming lineages, while plasticity in thermal tolerance was strongly reduced. 

We exposed three populations of the widespread copepod Acartia tonsa (Crustacea) to chronic, sub-lethal temperature selection for 15 generations. We generated thermal survivorship curves at regular intervals both during and after this period of selection to track the evolution of thermal tolerance. Using reciprocal transplants between ambient and warming conditions, we also tracked changes in the strength of phenotypic plasticity in thermal tolerance. Here, we provide the survivorship data used to estimate the curves and all associated code. This includes code to both analyze and visualize the data. 

Data and code are provided in an R Project folder structure. If replicating the analyses, we recommend that you open the .Rproj folder first to initiate the R session, then open the .R script file.