Stingless bee foragers experience more thermally stressful microclimates but have wider thermal tolerance breadths than other worker subcastes

The current state of anthropogenic climate change is of particular concern for insects, especially in the tropics where the effects are predicted to be the most deleterious. Researching climatic tolerance in social insects is challenging because adaptations can exist at both an individual level and a societal level. However, these studies are important because social insects comprise a tremendous portion of the planet’s animal biomass, biodiversity, and include many important pollinators. Considering how individual physiologies construct group-level adaptations can improve the accuracy of climate change impact assessments for a variety of social species. Tetragonisca angustula is a neotropical stingless bee species known to exhibit particularly high worker subcaste specialization in the form of a morphologically distinct soldier caste, a trait most commonly found and studied in ants and termites. We used this model species to investigate 1) whether age- and size-differentiated task grou..., , , # Data from: Stingless bee foragers experience more thermally stressful microclimates but have wider thermal tolerance breadths than other worker subcastes

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0k6djhb7s](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0k6djhb7s)

## Description of the data and file structure

The uploaded files include two printable 3D designs of iButton housings as well as all datasets used in our analyses. Detailed descriptions of each file are provided below. Temperature is in degrees Celsius.

### Dataset - T ang CT assay

Foragers (F), standing guards (S), and hovering guards (H) from 10 colonies underwent either a CTmax or a CTmin assay (indicated by the header \"Assay\") to assess for within-colony differences in thermal tolerance. Not all individuals were run simultaneously which is indicated by the column header \"Batch\". \"Coma\" indicates the temperature at which the individual lost mobility. \"CT\" indicates the critical temperature defined as the most extreme temperature at which the in...