Global patterns in plant–pollinator specialization

Sakhalkar, Sailee P

Blüthgen, Nico

Burkle, Laura A

CaraDonna, Paul

Dalsgaard, Bo

Dormann, Carsten F

Kaiser-Bunbury, Christopher N

Knight, Tiffany M

Ollerton, Jeff

Resasco, Julian

Schleuning, Matthias

Vázquez, Diego P

Afagwu, Rita N

Alarcón, Ruben

Amorim, Felipe W

Amorim, Marsal D

Anýž, Dominik

Arroyo-Correa, Blanca

Artamendi, Maddi

Atalay, Zeynep

Bain, Justin A

Baldock, Katherine C R

Ballantyne, Gavin

Ballarin, Caio S

Balmaki, Behnaz

Bartoš, Michael

Belavadi, Vasuki

Biella, Paolo

Bjorkman, Anne D

Raimundo Borges, João Paulo

Bosch, Jordi

Bosenbecker, Camila

Boyer, Stephane

Burghardt, Karin T

Cardona, Edson

Casiá-Ajché, Quebin Bosbely

Castagna, Anthony M T

Celep, Ferhat

Chisté, Melanie N

Clough, Yann

Cook, James M

Crowther, Liam P

Reis, Fabiana D

da Silva, Luis P

Dáttilo, Wesley

De Cárdenas, Valeska

Díaz-Calafat, Joan

Dicks, Lynn V

Dickson, Rye

Donald, Marion L

Dyer, Lee A

Dzekashu, Fairo F

Kenefic, Natalia Escobedo

Fayle, Tom M

Figueroa, Laura L

Filip, Jan

García-Camacho, Raúl

Gilpin, Amy-Marie

Giménez-Benavides, Luis

Gomes, Ingrid N

Grab, Heather

Grass, Ingo

Guy, Travis J

Hederström, Veronica

Hernández-Castellano, Carlos

Hervías-Parejo, Sandra

Holzschuh, Andrea

Hopfenmüller, Sebastian

Iriondo, José M

Janeček, Štěpán

Jersáková, Jana

Jha, Shalene

Kantsa, Aphrodite

Keasar, Tamar

Kendall, Liam

Klomberg, Yannick

Kobe, Ishmeal N

Krausl, Theresia

Landaverde, Patricia

Lara-Romero, Carlos

Lattorff, H Michael G

Librán-Embid, Felipe

Ling, Tial C

Lozada-Gobilard, Sissi

Luma, Francis Ewome

Luna, Pedro

Aguiar, Ludmilla M S

Machado, Ana Carolina Pereira

Machado, Isabel C

Magrach, Ainhoa

Maihoff, Fabienne

Marcacci, Gabriel

Martínez-Núñez, Carlos

Maruyama, Pietro K

Matsubara, Natsuki

Mayberry, Maggie

Mello, Marco A R

Diniz, Ugo Mendes

Méndez, Marcos

Mertens, Jan E J

Milla, Rubén

Morente-López, Javier

Nadia, Tarcila L

Nakas, Georgios

Nielsen, Anders

Ornai, Alon

Osorio-Canadas, Sergio

Osterman, Wilhelm H A

Palmer, Todd M

Petanidou, Theodora

Pirk, Christian W W

Prendergast, Kit S

Primack, Richard

Primo, Luis M

Querejeta, Marina

Quirino, Zelma

Rech, André Rodrigo

Reverté, Sara

Rey, Pedro J

Rocha-Filho, Léo C

Domínguez, Anselm Rodrigo

Rostami, Masoud A

Russell, Avery L

Santamaría, Silvia

Santos, Francisco A R

Sasaki, Takehiro

Saunders, Manu E

Silva, Victor H D

Simanonok, Michael P

Sounapoglou, Antigoni

Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf

Tarrant, Sam

Torices, Rubén

Traveset, Anna

Tscharntke, Teja

Uceda-Gómez, Guillermo

Urban-Mead, Katherine R

van der Kooi, Casper J

Westphal, Catrin

Yusuf, Abdullahi

Tropek, Robert

Journal Article

en

Publication

Nature Publishing Group

United Kingdom

10.1038/s41559-026-03170-7

une:1959.11/74954

Pollination is a key ecological process sustaining biodiversity and food security, yet global patterns of plant–pollinator specialization remain unresolved. Using a global dataset of quantitative plant–pollinator networks (>3,400 networks, >110,000 interactions), we show that specialization is latitudinally structured, but not as a single directional pattern. We find no consistent monotonic increase or decrease in specialization towards the Equator. Instead, network-level and pollinator specialization peak at low northern latitudes near the tropical–subtropical boundary, whereas plant specialization is hemispherically asymmetric. Climate is most often the best-supported predictor of specialization compared with latitude, biodiversity and environmental productivity. Network-level specialization declines with increasing mean annual temperature, with strong group-specific differences. Precipitation exerts nonlinear effects: plant specialization peaks at intermediate precipitation but is lower at the wettest sites, whereas pollinator specialization is lower at intermediate precipitation, although often in interaction with temperature. Pollinator groups diverge strongly, especially in contrasting precipitation-related patterns between birds and insects. These findings show that global plant–pollinator specialization is structured by latitude and climate in complex and taxon-specific ways, with implications for uneven responses of pollination networks to future climatic change.

link

Nature Ecology and Evolution, p. 1-27

2397-334X

1

27