Abstract
Plant–pollinator network studies have uncovered important generalities in the structure of these communities, rapidly advancing our understanding of the underlying drivers of such a structure. In spite of this, however, it is still unclear how changes in structural network properties influence overall plant pollination success. One key limitation is the lack of information on the relationship between network structural properties and aspects of pollination and plant reproductive success. Here, we estimate four plant species network structural metrics (interaction strength, weighted degree, closeness centrality, and specialization level), commonly used to describe their importance within plant–pollinator networks, at two different sites, and evaluate their effects on pollen deposition and pollen tube success. We found a positive effect of plant–pollinator specialization and a negative effect of closeness centrality on heterospecific pollen load size. We also found a marginal negative effect of closeness centrality on pollen tube success. Our results suggest that increasing plant–pollinator specialization within nested communities (pollinated by one or very few generalist insect species) may result in high levels of heterospecific pollen transfer. Furthermore, the differential effects of plant–pollinator network metrics on pollination success (pollen receipt and pollen tube success), highlight the need to integrate quantity (e.g. visitation rate) and quality (e.g. pollen delivery) aspects of pollination to achieve a more mechanistic understanding of the relationship between plant–pollinator network structure and function. Such knowledge is key to evaluate the resilience and stability of plant–pollinator communities and the services they provide in the face of increasing human disturbances.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript. The authors also thank J. Donaldson for aid with plant identification and C. Patel for help with data and sample collection in the field. We thank M. Crockett for help with identifying study sites. This work was funded by an East Tennessee State University research and development grant. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
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GAG wrote the manuscript, GAG, DB and AS analyzed the data, TW identified insects, all authors contributed to data collection, manuscript editing and conceptualization of the ideas.
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Communicated by Monica Geber.
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Arceo-Gómez, G., Barker, D., Stanley, A. et al. Plant–pollinator network structural properties differentially affect pollen transfer dynamics and pollination success. Oecologia 192, 1037–1045 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04637-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04637-5