Nesting behaviour predicts heat tolerance evolution and climate vulnerability in bees
Carmen R B da Silva, Julian E Beaman, James B Dorey, Tessa Bradford, Tobias J Smith, Ros Gloag, Vanessa Kellermann · 2026
Read Nesting behaviour predicts heat tolerance evolution and climate vulnerability in bees by Carmen R B da Silva, Julian E Beaman, James B Dorey, Tessa Bradford, Tobias J Smith, Ros Gloag, Vanessa Kellermann (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13270055.txt.
Description
Carmen R B da Silva and co-authors published a journal article in 2026 on heat tolerance in 95 wild bee species across Australia. Nesting habits differ: some bees nest in the ground, some in wood cavities, and some in plant stems. The team tested whether nest microclimate, the small local climate, predicts how heat tolerance evolved.
Stem nesters had evolved the highest heat tolerance, while ground nesters had the lowest, since soil lets them dodge extreme heat. Shared ancestry explained part of the pattern through shared nesting habits. That indicates repeated adaptation rather than a hard evolutionary cap. Adding nesting behavior also changed which species ranked most at risk from climate change.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Carmen R B da Silva, Julian E Beaman, James B Dorey, Tessa Bradford, Tobias J Smith, Ros Gloag, Vanessa Kellermann |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 56240 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |