Heavy-light flavor correlations and the QCD phase boundary

We discuss correlations between the light and heavy-light flavored mesons at finite temperature within a chiral effective theory implementing heavy quark symmetry. We show that the thermodynamics of the charmed mesons is strongly dragged by the chiral crossover dominated by the non-strange flavors. Consequently, the fluctuations carried by the states with strangeness can be used to characterize the onset of the chiral symmetry restoration.