Abstract
The time required to recover from cold exposure (chill coma recovery time) may represent an important metric of performance and has been linked to geographic distributions of diverse species. Chill coma recovery time (CCRT) has rarely been measured in bumble bees (genus Bombus) but may provide insights regarding recent changes in their distributions. We measured CCRT of Bombus vosnesenskii workers reared in common garden laboratory conditions from queens collected across altitude and latitude in the Western United States. We also compared CCRTs of male and female bumble bees because males are often overlooked in studies of bumble bee ecology and physiology and may differ in their ability to respond to cold temperatures. We found no relationship between CCRT and local climate at the queen collection sites, but CCRT varied significantly with sex and body mass. Because differences in the ability to recover from cold temperatures have been shown in wild-caught Bombus, we predict that variability in CCRT may be strongly influenced by plasticity.
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Acknowledgements
We thank L. Rachocki and N. Wojcieszak for help with colony rearing and maintenance.
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. DEB-1457659 to MED and JPS and DEB-1457645 to JDL. MED was additionally supported by Grant Nos. OIS-1826834 and EF-1921562 during the completion of the manuscript. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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MED, JPS, and JDL originally formulated the idea. KJO, LEJ, ZMP, and MED developed the methodology. JDH and JPS raised colonies from field-collected queens. KJO, LEJ and ZMP collected the data. KJO and MED analyzed the data and led the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.
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360_2021_1385_MOESM1_ESM.png
Supplementary file1 Results of a cluster analysis on monthly minimum temperatures from climate data (worldclim) at queen collection sites across the western US (Fig. 1). The analysis reveals two main clusters (C2 and C10) within which monthly minimums were highly correlated as revealed by uniformly high α (highest correlations between variables) and β (lowest correlations among variables) (Revelle, 1979; 2020). January and July minimum temperatures were thus used in models assessing effects of climate on CCRT (Table 4). See text for details. (PNG 816 KB)
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Supplementary file2 Results of a cluster analysis on bioclimatic variables (worldclim) for queen collection sites across the western US (Fig. 1). Based on the four clusters, BIO 4 (temperature seasonality), BIO 12 (annual precipitation), BIO 5 (maximum temperature of the warmest month), and BIO 1 (annual mean temperature) were chosen for inclusion in models relating climate to CCRT (Table 4). See (PNG 913 KB)
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Oyen, K.J., Jardine, L.E., Parsons, Z.M. et al. Body mass and sex, not local climate, drive differences in chill coma recovery times in common garden reared bumble bees. J Comp Physiol B 191, 843–854 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-021-01385-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-021-01385-7