Ecological and evolutionary drivers of stingless bee honey variation at the global scale

Stingless bee honey (SBH) is a prime natural product consumed and used for diverse medicinal and traditional purposes by local communities across the (sub-)tropics. The drivers of its compositional variation within and among species remain poorly understood, although this could inform broader and less explored eco-evolutionary theories. In our study, we aimed to disentangle the roles of different drivers of SBH compositional variation at both continental and global scales. Using a comparative approach involving parallel analyses of honeys produced by Apis mellifera as reference points, we specifically aimed to characterize the relative importance of SBH variation in relation to stingless bee species and evolutionary history, environmental conditions and biogeography. We collected and analysed 100 honey samples from A. mellifera around the world and 150 samples from twenty-three genera of stingless bees equally distributed in the Afrotropics (n = 50), the Neotropics (n = 50) and the Indo..., Honey profiling by 1H‑NMR spectroscopy To characterize the compounds and properties of our honey samples, we used H1 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (hereafter H1-NMR spectroscopy), a state-of-the-art analytical technique increasingly used alongside chemometrics statistical approaches for the qualitative and quantitative control of honeys, as well as to assess the botanical origin of honeys and to quantify their major constituting compounds (Schievano et al., 2012; Ohmenhaeuser et al., 2013). H1-NMR spectroscopy was carried out on all 240 samples described above at the laboratories of Quality Services International GmbH (QSI, Bremen, Germany) following the method described in Noiset et al, 2022. We quantified 36 compounds grouped in five categories : sugars (n=10), organic acids (n=3), amino acids (n=8), fermentation markers (i.e., all the compounds involved in sugar transformation trough alcoholic, acetic and lactic fermentation; n=10) and anti-microbial compounds (n=5) (Supple..., , # Ecological and evolutionary drivers of stingless bee honey variation at the global scale

## Dataset overview

This README outlines the data files, scripts, and figures used in the analysis, allowing for replication of results and further exploration. In this study, we aimed to disentangle the roles of evolutionary and environmental drivers of SBH compositional variation using a sampling design that combines honey profiling by H1-NMR spectroscopy with the collection of honeys from honey bees and stingless bees. The main dataset includes the compositional profiles of 240 honeys quantified by Quality Services International GmbH (QSI, Bremen, Germany) following the method described in Noiset et al. (2022; see below).

**Corresponding author information**

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Name: Pierre Noiset
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0141-6051
Affiliation: Agroecology Lab, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
email: [e-mail]
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Noiset, P., Cabirol, N., Rojas-Orop...,