  The tidal evolution of hot Jupiters may change the efficiency of transit
surveys of stellar clusters. The orbital decay that hot Jupiters suffer may
result in their destruction, leaving fewer transiting planets in older
clusters. We calculate the impact tidal evolution has for different assumed
stellar populations, including that of 47~Tuc, a globular cluster that was the
focus of an intense HST search for transits. We find that in older clusters one
expects to detect fewer transiting planets by a factor of two for surveys
sensitive to Jupiter-like planets in orbits out to 0.5~AU, and up to a factor
of 25 for surveys sensitive to Jupiter-like planets in orbits out to 0.08~AU.
Additionally, tidal evolution affects the distribution of transiting planets as
a function of semi-major axis, producing larger orbital period gaps for
transiting planets as the age of the cluster increases. Tidal evolution can
explain the lack of detected exoplanets in 47~Tuc without invoking other
mechanisms. Four open clusters residing within the {\em Kepler} fields of view
have ages that span 0.4-8~Gyr--if {\em Kepler} can observe a significant number
of planets in these clusters, it will provide key tests for our tidal evolution
hypothesis. Finally, our results suggest that observers wishing to discover
transiting planets in clusters must have sufficient accuracy to detect lower
mass planets, search larger numbers of cluster members, or have longer
observation windows to be confident that a significant number of transits will
occur for a population of stars.
