Table 2.

Comparison of Cox regression model fits by mean change over 500 simulated data sets in Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) relative to a reference model of temperature alone (modeled linearly). All models were stratified by study

Modela	Mean AIC change
temp	Ref.
temp + blood*sugar + water	-689.97
temp*species + blood*sugar + water	-1328.38
rcs(temp)*species + blood*sugar + water	-2991.04
rcs(temp)*species + SVPD*species + blood*sugar + water	-4693.35
rcs(temp)*species + rcs(SVPD)*species + blood*sugar + water	-5684.15
rcs(temp)*species + rcs(RH)*species + blood*sugar + water	-5371.91
rcs(temp)*species + rcs(VP)*species + blood*sugar + water	-5043.55

^atemp, temperature (°C); blood, access to blood meals provided; sugar, access to sugar sources provided; water, access to water provided; rcs, restricted cubic spline; SVPD, saturation vapor pressure deficit (kPa); VP, vapor pressure (kPa); RH, relative humidity (%). (*) indicates a modeled interaction. Spline knots were located at the default quantiles in rms (0.05, 0.35, 0.65, and 0.95; Harrell [155]) and correspond to the following values: 10.8, 25.0, 26.2, and 35.0 °C for temperature, and approximately 0.13, 0.63, 1.11, and 3.82 kPa for SVPD (precise knot placements are provided in Additional file 3)