High salt tolerance but no local adaption to road salts in <em>Tetrahymena</em> ciliates

Road salt application improves road safety but leads to salinization of nearby freshwater ecosystems. If populations readily adapt to their local salinity environment, then we expect to find differences in salt tolerance between populations found near vs. far from roads. We determined the salt tolerance of 10 wild strains of the freshwater microbial eukaryote Tetrahymena by measuring growth in varying salt concentrations in a microplate reader. We found no significant correlation between salt tolerance and road distance, suggesting that these populations are not locally adapted to their salinity environment. This result may be due to the unexpectedly high salt tolerance across lines, unknown patterns of migration between ponds, or sampling conditions. , , # Data from: High salt tolerance but no local adaption to road salts in *Tetrahymena* ciliates Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.tb2rbp0fk](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tb2rbp0fk) ## Description of the data and file structure Data are output from microbial growth assays on a 96-well plate reader. ### Files and variables **Files labeled \"data\"**Â are OD650 values from a 96-well Tecan SUNRISE microplate reader. Each file contains data from one half of a 96-well plate, which had cells growing in a particular concentration of NaCl. Measurements were taken every 10 minutes for 6 days; time is shown in seconds. The prefix to \"data\" indicates the assay condition: Na0 = 0 g/L NaCl Na4 = 4.5 g/L NaCl Na7 = 7 g/L NaCl Na9 = 9 g/L NaCl Na11 = 11 g/L NaCl Na13 = 13 g/L NaCl Na15 = 15 g/L NaCl Na18 = 18 g/L NaCl **Files labeled \"plate\"**Â contain information on which strain of* Tetrahymena*Â was in each well for a given assay, e.g. Na4_plate shows which strains were in each well of the Na4_as..., ,