A thermal performance curve perspective explains decades of disagreements over how air temperature affects the flight metabolism of honey bees

While multiple studies have shown that honey bees and some other flying insects lower their flight metabolic rates when flying at high air temperatures, critics have suggested such patterns result from poor experimental methods as, theoretically, air temperature should not appreciably affect aerodynamic force requirements. Here, we show that apparently contradictory studies can be reconciled by considering the thermal performance curve of flight muscle. We show that prior studies that found no effects of air temperature on flight metabolism of honey bees achieved flight muscle temperatures that were near or on equal, opposite sides of the thermal performance curve. Honey bees vary their wing kinematics and metabolic heat production to thermoregulate, and how air temperature affects the flight metabolic rate of honey bees is predictable using a non-linear thermal performance perspective of honey bee flight muscle., , , # A thermal performance curve perspective explains decades of disagreements over how air temperature affects the flight metabolism of honey bees

[Access this dataset on Dryad](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8w9ghx3vg∴)

The data in this file come from published data (i.e., Heinrich, 1980; Harrison et al., 2001; Woods et al., 2005; Glass and Harrison, 2022) and a new dataset presented in the main body of the manuscript, which used the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Each study has its separate tab. We digitally extracted data from the figures of the Heinrich, Harrison et al., Woods et al. studies, as these datasets were inaccessible (Heinrich, 1980; Harrison et al., 2001; Woods et al., 2005). Methods for these published studies can be found in each published article, the references for which can be found in the list in the main article. From these previously published studies, we report the free-flying, mass-specific metabolic rates (mW/g) of unloaded bees and their achieved flight muscle tem...