Data from: Can near-infrared exposure help mitigate pesticide-impaired thermoregulation in adult bees?
Data files
Jun 16, 2026 version files 407.50 KB
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NIRtime_data_csv.csv
375.76 KB
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README.md
3.84 KB
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Zhu_pesticide_NIR_3.R
27.91 KB
Abstract
Exposure to pesticides may place the process of animal thermoregulation at risk, with impacts on organism fitness and function across landscapes. Quantifying such impacts whilst finding mitigative solutions is thus important especially given pesticide applications are forecast to continue across changing thermal landscapes. Here, we expose an important insect pollinator - bumblebees - to a cholinergic pesticide (neonicotinoid) and characterise the impact on adult body temperature. We further investigate how near infrared (NIR; 660 or 850 nm) mediates this pesticide effect using three exposure durations (5, 10, or 20 minutes per hour). Held at 18^°C ambient, pesticide only exposed bees exhibited a steep body temperature drop (nearly 8°C) over the 73hr assay (relative to control bees that maintained their body at ~30°C). Promisingly, for pesticide and NIR exposed bees, 660 nm for 5 minutes more than halved the rate of body temperature decrease (relative to pesticide only bees), and intriguingly, this counter effect lessened with increased NIR exposure time. Additionally, 850 nm for 20 mins may also alleviate body temperature decline by nearly 40%. Our study reports a mechanism by which pesticides threaten the critical functioning of a non-target organism and provides a potential therapy worthy of further investigation.
Zhu, Graystock & Gill
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7pvmcvf8p
Data file representing quantitative data on bee thorax temperature response to pesticide and near infrared exposure. Includes: csv file for statistical analyses; R script showing the code for data visualisation, statistical model fitting and figure productions.
Description of the data and file structure
CSV file (NIRtime_data_csv.csv) providing thorax thermal image measurements of individual bees over time (73 hrs) in response to pesticide exposure and NIR exposure combinations relative to a control treatment
Each row is one temperature measurement for one individual bee at one time point
Variables
- Sample = the cumulative number of time a cohort of four workers has been measured (1, 2, 3, ... 722)
- Group = C, I, N5, N10 and N20, representing control, imidacloprid-only, and NIR duration treatment groups
- Treatment = specific experimental treatment, Control, Imidacloprid, N5-660, N5-850, N10-660, N10-850, N20-660 and N20-850
- Container = akin to Microcolony with concatenated 'sample' and 'group' to provide a cohort unique ID.
- Duration = exposure rate of NIR (0, 5, 10, 20 minutes per hour)
- Wavelength = 0, 660nm or 850 nm wavelength of NIR (the letter A, B or C was just added for categorical modelling purposes)
- Day = day that measures were taken since onset of experimental exposure (1, 2, 3 and 4)
- Hour = the sequential hour for each day a measure was taken (1st, 2nd, 3rd ... 6th)
- Temp_mean = the mean bee thorax temperature across all four workers (see Methods)
- Colony = parental colony ID (1 or 2)
- Date = date
- food = mass of food consumed in grams
- Mass = the mean mass of each worker bee in grams
- mass(mg) = the mean mass of each worker bee in milligrams
- food(mg) = mass of food consumed in milligrams
- Consumptionperbee = food(mg) divided by four (which is the number of workers per Container)
- Experiment = experimental replicate (1 or 2)
- HourNumeric = number of hours since starting measurements per day (1, 2, 3 ...6)
- TimePoint = integer time point (cumulative number of measures) since onset of experiment (1, 2, 3, ...19)
- Individual = Bee number of each container (Bee1, Bee2, Bee3, Bee4)
- Temperature(°C) = the thorax temperature for each worker, representing the mean value of the thermal images taken in triplicate (see Methods)
- time = the true number of hours since experimental onset (1, 2, 3 ...73).
- timeseq = copy of Timepoint
Missing values
Missing values in the dataset are represented either as blank cells or as NA, depending on the variable.
NA values in food(mg), and blank cells in food and Consumptionperbee, indicate that sucrose solution consumption was not measured for the final temperature measurement period. These rows were retained because thorax temperature measurements were still available for the relevant individuals and time points.
Blank cells in Temperature indicate cases where thorax temperature could not be measured because the individual bee had died during the experiment. These rows were retained in the dataset for transparency, but automatically excluded from statistical models in R when Temperature was required as the response variable.
Sharing/Access information
Thermal image files were produced from the project, but due to the number of files and total size, we have not uploaded to Dryad. However, we can provide these files on request by emailing the corresponding author Richard Gill (r.gill[at]imperial.ac.uk).
Code
Analysis of thorax thermal temperature response to treatments
File name: Zhu_pesticide_NIR_3.R (R file)
Description: Full R script for all data visualisation, statistical analysis, and figure plots.