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Section Symposium

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology

Hot Bees: Bridging Approaches and Innovative Tools to Understand Heat Wave Impacts on Wild Bees

The tox-ecology of heat exposure: Cryptic variation in bumble bee heat tolerance across the Americas

Sunday, November 9, 2025
2:45 PM - 3:00 PM Pacific
Location: Oregon Convention Center, D133-134, OCC
Oral Presentation
Heat tolerance may be a crucial predictor of success for diverse animals in current habitats and under
future conditions. The links between warming temperatures and shifting distributions and population
declines of bumble bees would seem to reflect negative effects of heat on these cold-adapted bees. But
bumble bees have high critical thermal maxima (CT max , ~50 °C), suggesting high heat tolerance. And
CT max varies little among species, making species-specific responses to warming perplexing. Here, we
argue that heat tolerance is a complex trait not fully captured by CT max and apply a toxicology framework
to relate mortality risk to the intensity and duration of heat exposures. We measured mortality up to 48
hrs after different duration (10-40 min) exposures to 45 °C for 4 species of bumble bees from Oregon
(Bombus vancouverensis, B. vosnesenskii) and Wyoming, USA (B. huntii), Chiapas, México (B.
ephippiatus), and Bogotá, Colombia (B. pauloensis). We also compared heat sensitivity among
populations across altitude and after acclimation and lab-rearing. We show that the toxicology
framework allows for direct comparison of heat tolerance across diverse taxa and under varying
conditions. Further, when combined with field-realistic operative temperatures, it allows for estimation
of current and future effects of heat exposure on mortality.