Phenotypic and microsite plant individual variation determine the pollination network structure and its functional consequences

Abstract

The biotic and abiotic context of individual plants in animal-pollinated plant populations may influence pollinator foraging behaviour and therefore how the pollen flow occurs. Thus, this variation among conspecifics within a given plant population can ultimately influence the plant reproductive success. Here we used a fine-scale, well characterized population of Halimium halimifolium in combination with exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to assess how the intrapopulation variation in intrinsic (i.e. phenotype and phenology) and extrinsic (i.e. microsite) plant attributes configures individual plant-pollinator networks and its functional consequences. We found that pollinator visitation patterns and the emerging network configuration were associated with both intrinsic and extrinsic plant attributes, such as the number of flowers, the flowering synchrony and the cover of intraspecific and interspecific neighbours. Both intrinsic and extrinsic plant attributes also affected the plant female reproductive success directly and indirectly - through its effects on the probability of conspecifics plants to share pollinators. Our study opens up new approaches to assess and predict the functional consequences of context-dependency in plant-pollinator interactions, especially under global change scenarios, where the ecological context of individual plants is likely to change.