Aging patterns and predicting longevity from early-life performance in a solitary bee

Performance, including muscle function and stress tolerance, tends to decline with age. However, there is considerable variation in performance among individuals of the same age, highlighting that chronological age does not always reflect biological age. To better understand the mechanisms behind aging, it is crucial to identify what drives some individuals to age more rapidly than others. However, we must first be able to predict whether an individual will have a long or short lifespan. Here we conducted a longitudinal study to explore how locomotor activity, cold tolerance (chill-coma recovery time), and resting metabolic rates change with age using the solitary bee Megachile rotundata. After determining how each performance changes with age, we assessed whether short-lived individuals performance differed from long-lived individuals during early-life. Results show that locomotor activity and chill-coma recovery time decline with age, and resting metabolic rates remain stable throughout their lifespan. During early-life, low cold tolerance and low mass at emergence are linked to shorter lifespans, but only in female bees. These findings indicate that an individual’s early-life performance account for some of the variation in lifespans seen within a population. Additionally, the results contribute to the growing evidence that not all traits decline with age, and show strong sex-specific aging patterns for all three physiological traits measured. This work was funded by NSF-IOS-2311952, USDA-ARS 3060-21220-032-00D, and USDA-ARS NACA 58-3060-3-023. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.