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.