DOI: 10.5061/dryad.zw3r228dr
title: Brain size predicts bees’ tolerance to urban environments

description: The rapid conversion of natural habitats to anthropogenic landscapes is
 threatening insect pollinators worldwide, raising concern on the negative
 consequences for their fundamental role as plant pollinators. However, not
 all pollinators are negatively affected by habitat conversion, as certain
 species find in anthropogenic landscapes appropriate resources to persist
 and proliferate. The reason why some species thrive in anthropogenic
 environments while most find them inhospitable remains poorly understood.
 The cognitive buffer hypothesis, widely supported in vertebrates but
 untested in insects, offers a potential explanation. This theory suggests
 that species with larger brains have enhanced behavioural plasticity,
 enabling them to confront and adapt to novel challenges. To investigate
 this hypothesis in insects, we measured brains for 89 bee species, and
 evaluated the association between brain size and habitat preferences. Our
 analyses revealed that bee species that prefer urban habitats had larger
 brains relative to their body size than those who prefer forested or
 agricultural habitats. Additionally, urban bees exhibited larger body
 sizes and, consequently, larger absolute brain sizes. Our results provide
 the first empirical support for the cognitive buffer hypothesis in
 invertebrates, suggesting that a large brain in bees could confer
 behavioural advantages to tolerate urban environments.
description: This dataset contains measurements of brain and body size
 measurements for bee species captured in Europe and North America. In
 addition, we include information about their feeding specialisation and
 the occurrence information downloaded from the Global Biodiversity
 Information Facility. Finally, all the code and data generated files for
 processing, analysing, and writing this manuscript are also
 included.
description: # Brain size predicts bees’ tolerance to urban environments
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zw3r228dr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zw3r228dr) Our study evaluates how relative brain size is associated with the habitat preference of the bees. In addition, we also considered how diet specialisation is associated with brain size and the different habitat preferences. We provide: (1) the dataset with brain and body size; (2) the diet specialisation type for the different species; and (3) all the code and extra processing files used to analyse and write this manuscript. In the code file, we provide a copy of the versions of the libraries used to generate this manuscript to ensure reproducibility. Note that our download of species occurrences from the Global Information Biofiversity Facility (GBIF) can be accessed at the following permanent link: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.5s5kuf ## Description of the data and file structure Dataset 1: The trait dataset contains measurements of intertegular distance (millimeters) and brain size (milligrams) for female bee specimens. Those are the average values (Mean number of individuals to calculate the average = 3.31). Not that this file is the result of averaging the individual records and combining data from Sayol et al., 2020 (Proceedings of the Royal Society B) and data from the thesis of Miguel Ángel Collado (Thesis title: Bee behavioral plasticity in a global change context). Dataset 2: Diet specialisation type of the different species as classified in Sayol et al., 2020 (Proceedings of the Royal Society B). Species were classified as oligolectic if they used a single family to feed their brood or polylectic if they use several families. Code: All code and and generated files to process, analyse and write the manuscript. Link to access the downloaded species occurrences from GBIF: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.5s5kuf ## Code/Software All our analyses were undertaken in R version 4.0.5.