Determining whether seed production is pollen limited has been an area of intensive empirical study over the last two decades. Yet current evidence does not allow satisfactory assessment of the causes or consequences of pollen limitation. Here, we critically evaluate existing theory and issues concerning pollen limitation. Our main conclusion is that a change in approach is needed to determine whether pollen limitation reflects random fluctuations around a pollen-resource equilibrium, an adaptation to stochastic pollination environments, or a chronic syndrome caused by an environmental perturbation. We formalize and extend D. Haig and M. Westoby's conceptual model, and illustrate its use in guiding research on the evolutionary consequences of pollen limitation, i.e., whether plants evolve or have evolved to ameliorate pollen limitation. This synthesis also reveals that we are only beginning to understand when and how pollen limitation at the plant level translates into effects on plant population dynamics. We highlight the need for both theoretical and empirical approaches to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of life-history characters, Allee effects, and environmental perturbations in population declines mediated by pollen limitation. Lastly, our synthesis identifies a critical need for research on potential effects of pollen limitation at the community and ecosystem levels.

Quantifying the extent to which seed production is limited by the availability of pollen has been an area of intensive empirical study over the past few decades. Whereas theory predicts that pollen augmentation should not increase seed production, numerous empirical studies report significant and strong pollen limitation. Here, we use a variety of approaches to examine the correlates of pollen limitation in an effort to understand its occurrence and importance in plant evolutionary ecology. In particular, we examine the role of recent ecological perturbations in influencing pollen limitation and discuss the relation between pollen limitation and plant traits. We find that the magnitude of pollen limitation observed in natural populations depends on both historical constraints and contemporary ecological factors.

Our understanding of pollen limitation depends on a realistic view of its magnitude. Previous reviews of pollen supplementation experiments concluded that a majority of plant species suffers from pollen limitation and that its magnitude is high. Here, we perform a meta-analysis and find evidence that publication bias, experimental design, and the response variable chosen all influence the magnitude of pollen limitation. Fail-safe numbers indicate that publication bias exists for some measures of pollen limitation; significant results are more likely to be published and therefore available for review. Moreover, experiments conducted on only a fraction of a plant's flowers and reproductive episodes report ~8-fold higher effect sizes than those on all flowers produced over the entire lifetime, likely because resource reallocation among flowers and across years contributes to estimates of pollen limitation. Studies measuring percentage fruit set report higher values of pollen limitation than those measuring other response variables, such as seeds per fruit, perhaps because many plant species will not produce fruits unless adequate pollen receipt occurs to fertilize most ovules. We offer suggestions for reducing the bias introduced by methodology in pollen supplementation experiments and discuss our results in the context of optimality theory.