Student 10-Minute Paper
Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology
Student Competition
Student
Kristin M. Robinson (she/her/hers)
Graduate Student
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Kaitlin M. Baudier
Assistant Professor
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
The current state of anthropogenic climate change is of particular concern for insects, especially in the tropics where the effects are predicted to be the most deleterious. Researching climatic tolerance in social insects is challenging because adaptations can exist at both an individual level and societal level; however, these studies are particularly important as social insects comprise a tremendous portion of the planet’s animal biomass, biodiversity, and include many important pollinators. Considering how individual physiologies fit into the context of the whole colony may provide important insights into accurately assessing climate change effects and informing new ways to think about within-colony variation beyond physiology. Tetragonisca angustula is a neotropical stingless bee species known to exhibit particularly high worker subcaste specialization in the form of a morphologically distinct soldier caste, a trait found and studied most commonly in ants and termites. These T. angustula soldiers are further differentiated by age and the tasks they perform. We used this model species to understand how caste specialization may impact colony survival under stressful thermal conditions, and whether any worker subcaste functions as a colony-level limiting factor. We measured the thermal tolerance (CTmax and CTmin) and assessed how microclimates differ across T. angustula worker subcastes. We present data from this work, explain why the results are surprising, and discuss the implications of understanding worker thermal tolerance in the context of social insects and climate change.