Author response for "Bee phenology is predicted by climatic variation and functional traits"

Climate drivers of adult insect activity are conditioned by life history traits

“…We predict strong interactions between traits and key climate predictors. For example, we expect the seasonal activity of insects with thermally buffered larval stages to be less sensitive to variation in temperature than species without thermally buffered larval stages, aligning with a recent study on bees (Stemkovski et al, 2020). We further predict adult duration to vary based on voltinism, with multivoltine species showing stronger responses to temperature than univoltine species.…”

“…Warm, wet areas demonstrated longer adult insect duration than cooler, wetter regions. This interaction is expected, considering that snow contributes to annual precipitation in cool regions and snowmelt date delays the beginning of activity more than the end (Stemkovski et al, 2020). These regional effects also included life history interactions with temperature.…”

“…For these reasons, life history traits, known to be important in determining insect activity (Diamond et al, 2011;Zografou et al, 2021), may strongly determine adult insect termination. For example, Stemkovski et al (2020) found that timing of bee emergence was most influenced by climatic variation, but termination of adult bee foraging was better explained by life history traits. Specifically, bee species that nest below ground ended foraging earlier than species nesting above, but bee species that overwinter as prepupae ended foraging later than those that overwinter as pupae (Stemkovski et al, 2020).…”