Dataset for Devenish et al 'Predicting effects of warming on insect pollinators using the metabolic theory of ecology'

We tested whether the main predictions of the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) hold for four species of globally distributed pollinating insects: Eristalis tenax, Lucilia sericata, Apis mellifera, and Bombus terrestris. We used a closed respirometry system to measure insect CO2 production rates across a continuous range of temperatures (15- 35°C). We tested four major hypotheses derived from the MTE: 1) metabolism will scale with body mass following a ¾ power-law relationship, 2) metabolism positively scales exponentially with temperature according to Arrhenius’ Law, 3) the slopes (i.e., activation energy) of the temperature-metabolism relationship falls within the range of -0.60 and -0.70 eV, and 4) hypotheses 1-3 hold, both within and among species.