| In plant communities, flowers are patchy in space and time over many scales. Flower-feeding animals make complex foraging decisions in this setting, but they may respond in characteristic ways to variation in floral distribution and the presence of different plant species. For plant species that rely on animals to disperse their pollen for sexual reproduction, pollination will reflect these animal foraging decisions. Because many pollinators are highly mobile and return to foraging areas over time, they may affect plant pollination over scales broader than typically considered (a few metres and within foraging bouts). My dissertation explores how individual pollinators respond to floral resource variation, and the implications for plant pollination success. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
