Cover March 2025

A worker of Apis mellifera visits a flower in the coastal environment of the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico. This bee is a key species in the region's pollination network, highlighted in "Thermal tolerance and sociality explain the interactive role of bees in a pollination network" by Ratoni et al. (2024).
Photo: Álvaro Hernández Rivera

This study examines how sociality and thermal tolerance influence the interactive roles of bees within a pollination network in a coastal environment of the Gulf of Mexico. The authors classify bees based on their social structure (eusocial, subsocial, and solitary) and assess their thermal tolerance using critical thermal maximum (CTmax) and minimum (CTmin) temperatures.

The results reveal that eusocial bees, such as Apis mellifera, play a more significant role in the network compared to subsocial and solitary bees. Furthermore, bees with lower heat tolerance (lower CTmax) and higher cold tolerance (higher CTmin) were found to have greater interactive roles. These findings suggest that traits like sociality and thermal tolerance are crucial in determining the importance of bees within pollination networks and can help predict their responses to environmental changes, particularly in the face of climate change.

The study highlights the value of considering life-history traits in understanding species' roles within ecological networks. It emphasizes the need for further research on how thermal tolerance and sociality shape species interactions, especially as climate change continues to impact ecosystems.

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