Flower visits and pollinator pollen load networks reveal the effects of pollinator sharing on heterospecific pollen transfer in a subalpine plant community

Abstract

The mutualistic network of plant–pollinator also involves interspecific pollination caused by pollinator sharing. Plant–pollinator networks are commonly based on flower visit observations, which may not adequately represent the actual pollen transfer between co‐flowering plant species. Here, we compared the network structure of plant–pollinator interactions based on flower visits (FV) and pollen loads (PL) on the bodies of pollinators and tested how the degree of pollinator sharing in the two networks affected heterospecific pollen transfer (HPT) between plant species in a subalpine meadow. The FV and PL networks were largely overlapped. PL network included more links than FV network. The positions of plant and pollinator species in the FV and PL networks were positively correlated, indicating that both networks could detect major plant–pollinator interactions. The degree of pollinator sharing, based on either the FV or the PL network, positively influenced the amount of heterospecific pollen transferred between plant species pairs. However, the degree of pollinator sharing had a low overall explanatory power for HPT, and the explanatory powers of the FV and PL networks were similar. Overall, our study highlights the importance of FV and PL for understanding the drivers and outcomes of plant–pollinator interactions, as well as their relevance to HPT.