DOI: 10.5061/dryad.j9kd51cq3
title: Data from: Senescence and early-life performance as predictors of lifespan in a solitary bee

description: Performance tends to decline with age, including muscle function and
 stress tolerance. Yet, performance can vary widely among individuals
 within the same age group, showing that chronological age does not always
 represent biological age. To better understand ageing, we need to examine
 what drives some individuals to age faster than others. In order to
 achieve this, first we need to be able to predict whether an individual
 will have a long or short lifespan. In this study, we conducted a
 longitudinal study tracking individual-level locomotor activity,
 chill-coma recovery time, and metabolic rates, and assessed whether
 early-life performance is linked to lifespan using the solitary bee
 Megachile rotundata. We found that locomotor activity and chill-coma
 recovery times decline in old adults. However, resting metabolic rate did
 not change with age. We also found low cold tolerance and low mass at
 emergence in early-life are linked to shorter female lifespans, showing
 that early-life performance can explain some of the variation in lifespan
 in a population. Finally, these results also show that not all traits
 decline with age within the same species, and shed new light on sexual
 dimorphism in physiological traits and ageing.
description: All details of methods used for data collection and processing
 can be found in the Materials and Methods Section of Szejner-Sigal et al.
 2025. Senescence and early-life performance as predictors of lifespan in a
 solitary bee. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological
 Sciences.
description: # Data from: Senescence and early-life performance as predictors of
 lifespan in a solitary bee
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j9kd51cq3](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j9kd51cq3) ## Description of the data and file structure This README file was generated on 2025-2-18 by Andre Szejner-Sigal GENERAL INFORMATION 1\. Title of Dataset: Dataset: Senescence and early-life performance as predictors of lifespan in a solitary bee 2\. Author Information A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: Andre Szejner-Sigal Institution: North Dakota State University, Biological Sciences Department Address: 1340 Bolley Drive, 201 Stevens Hall Fargo, ND 58102 Email: [andre.szejner@gmail.com](mailto:andre.szejner@gmail.com) 3\. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): Apr - Sep 2023 4\. Geographic location of data collection: Data collected at North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota 58102 5\. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: This work was funded by NSF-IOS-2311952, USDA-ARS 3060-21220-032-00D, and USDA-ARS NACA 58-3060-3-023. SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION 1\. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: NA 2\. Links to publications that cite or use the data: NA 3\. Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: NA 4\. Links/relationships to ancillary data sets: NA 5\. Was data derived from another source? no 6\. Recommended citation for this dataset: Szejner-Sigal A, Rinehart JP, Bowsher JH, Greenlee KJ (2025), Data from: Senescence and early-life performance as predictors of lifespan in a solitary bee, Dryad, Dataset ### Files and variables **DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: Activity.csv** 1\. Number of variables: 7 2\. Number of cases/rows: 809 3\. Variable List: box- Housing unit identifier id- Individual bee identifier (box. color) age- age of bee (days) sex- sex of bee (f = female, m = male) total.act- total locomotor activity (total beam crossings) age.death- age at death of bee (days) age.group20- lifespan groupings (1.Short = short-lived bee, 3.Long = long-lived bee, 2.Average = average-lived bee) 4\. Missing data codes: appear as NA **DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: CCRT.csv** 1\. Number of variables: 9 2\. Number of cases/rows: 601 3\. Variable List: id- Individual bee identifier (box. color) box- Housing unit identifier age- age of bee (days) ccrt.s- chill coma recovery time with unrecovered as 1200s (s) censor.0- censored individual identifier (0 = censor, 1 = uncensored) ccrt.na- chill coma recovery time with unrecovered as NA (s) sex- sex of bee (f = female, m = male) age.death- age at death of bee (days) age.group20- lifespan groupings (1.Short = short-lived bee, 3.Long = long-lived bee, 2.Average = average-lived bee) 4\. Missing data codes: appear as NA **DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: RMR.csv** 1\. Number of variables: 11 2\. Number of cases/rows: 660 3\. Variable List: id- Individual bee identifier (box. color) age- age of bee (days) box- Housing unit identifier sex- sex of bee (f = female, m = male) age.death- age at death of bee (days) mass- mass of bee (mg) mr.co2.ml.min- bee CO2 production rate (ml/min) mr.o2.ml.min- bee O2 production rate (ml/min) RER- respiratory exchange ratio outliers- outliers age.group20- lifespan groupings (1.Short = short-lived bee, 3.Long = long-lived bee, 2.Average = average-lived bee) 4\. Missing data codes: appear as NA **DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: Survival.csv** 1\. Number of variables: 5 2\. Number of cases/rows: 460 3\. Variable List: id- Individual bee identifier (box. color) sex- sex of bee (f = female, m = male) experiment- phenotyping experiment identifier (1.MR = resting metabolic rate experiment, 2.Activity = locomotor activity experiment, 3.CCRT = chill coma recovery time experiment) censor.0- censored individual identifier (0 = censor, 1 = uncensored) age.death- age at death of bee (days) 4\. Missing data codes: appear as NA