Data from: The diversity of floral temperature patterns, and their use by pollinators

Pollinating insects utilise various sensory cues to identify and learn rewarding flower species. One such cue is floral temperature, created by captured sunlight or plant thermogenesis. Bumblebees, honeybees and stingless bees can distinguish flowers based on differences in overall temperature between flowers. We report here that floral temperature often differs between different parts of the flower creating a temperature structure or pattern. Temperature patterns are common, with 55% of 118 plant species thermographed, showing within-flower temperature differences greater than the 2°C difference that bees are known to be able to detect. Using differential conditioning techniques, we show that bumblebees can distinguish artificial flowers differing in temperature patterns comparable to those seen in real flowers. Thus, bumblebees are able to perceive the shape of these within-flower temperature patterns. Floral temperature patterns may therefore represent a new floral cue that could assist pollinators in the recognition and learning of rewarding flowers.Infrared thermographs of flower speciesThis zipped dataset contains 136 folders, corresponding to the 136 species and subspecies thermographed as described in Harrap et al. All the files contain three .jpg files. Each folder contains two infrared images (which are identical to each other, except that the image marked with an 'm' has the hottest and coldest points identified as described in the text). Each folder also contains an accompanying photograph taken in the visible spectrum, taken by the thermal camera at the same time as the infrared image. The visible spectrum photographs are provided purely to give an indication of the floral form, and do not contribute any further data that is used in the paper.harrap et al IR images.zipRaw and processed data for figures 3 and 4A zipped file containing nine .csv files. Three of these files each correspond to figures 3a, 3b and 4, and contain the raw data and processed versions that relate to the final figures. The readme file details the format of these filesfigures3and4_data.zi