DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v41ns1rzh
title: Flexible diets enable pollinators to cope with changes in plant community composition

description: Switching plant species visited by pollinators (partner flexibility), has
 been proposed as a behavioural mechanism able to attenuate the negative
 impacts of shifts in plant communities on pollination. However, it is
 unclear if the magnitude of such response is generalizable or depends on
 the environmental context. Moreover, the ability of pollinators to exploit
 plants with dissimilar traits (trait flexibility) has been overlooked,
 even though it can affect the spectrum of new partners available. To shed
 some light on this problem, we quantified partner and trait flexibility in
 five communities from four different environments, from Alpine to
 semi-arid. We evaluated if the rate at which pollinators incorporated new
 plant species throughout the flowering season was similar across
 communities or context-dependent. Then, we assessed if pollinators changed
 the type of flowers visited and if such trait flexibility was related to
 their capacity to visit new plant species. Finally, we developed an
 agent-based model to explore if diet flexibility can protect pollination
 when the plant community changes. To this end, we used scenarios of
 phenological decoupling. In general, pollinators switched interaction
 partners to cope with the temporal replacement of plant species. Yet, the
 magnitude of such behaviour varied across communities, probably in
 response to differences in the number of floral resources available. Also,
 pollinators were able to visit plant species with dissimilar traits,
 though both components of diet flexibility (partner identity and traits)
 did not necessarily covary. Thus, to have a full picture of pollinators’
 diet flexibility we need to consider the floral traits of partners.
 Finally, our theoretical model shows that diet flexibility can protect
 pollination after shifts in plant communities; but that such positive
 effects are limited by trait-matching between co-occurring species.
 Overall, our study highlights the importance of incorporating plant traits
 when evaluating the ability of pollinators to find new interaction
 partners. Besides, our simulation results suggest that diet flexibility
 may not unequivocally protect pollination against changes in plant
 communities, especially if they entail shifts in the characteristics of
 the floral assemblage, and hence, the ability of pollinators to find new
 interaction partners can be compromised.
description: Some sets of data from field work is already available in online
 resources. When this is the case the specific link or identification (e.g.
 dryad file, figshare) is provided. The dataset contains
 two parts. (1) Observational data from three regions- Montane temperate
 alpine, Mediterranean alpine and Monte desert and (2) a folder with
 scripts and input data from an Agent based model for pollination. Datasets
 from field work contain information of plant-pollinator interactions on
 weekly basis, relative abundance of flowers and plant traits. When the
 source of data has been published elsewhere the specific link is provided.
 In the case of the agent base model, we include the script, functions and
 input data so that it can be run.