The missing links: Bee and non‐bee alpine visitor observation networks differ to pollen transport networks

Abstract

Abstract A majority of the world's flowering plants benefit from insect pollination. Bees in particular are known to carry large amounts of pollen, and the pollen load transported is often highly conspecific. However, there is limited knowledge about the transfer of pollen by other non‐bee flower‐visiting insect taxa. We observed and collected insects visiting flowers in an Australian alpine plant community. We identified insect body pollen loads to evaluate the relative differences among taxa using visitation and pollen transport networks. We sampled a diverse pollinator community from 39 insect families that visited 31 plant species (n = 488 individual insects). Pollen abundance and richness on insect bodies varied significantly among Diptera, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera both among individuals and across insect families. Bees carried more pollen overall than the other three insect orders surveyed, yet dipterans were the most frequent flower visitors overall, with six dipteran families observed visiting flowers more frequently than the most frequent hymenopteran visitor (Apis mellifera L.). Apidae was also the only family in this study to carry consistently large quantities of pollen. At the order level, Diptera carried the second highest quantity of pollen but greater diversity of pollen than other insect orders. Importantly, visitation networks revealed visits to plant taxa that were not identified in pollen transport networks and vice versa. Given the missing links in both visitor observation and pollen transfer networks, we advocate combining both types of networks to provide a more accurate estimate of the full range of plant–pollinator interactions occurring within and across taxa at the community level. Understanding the variation in plant–pollinator interactions as a result of differences among taxa and between networks of flower visitors, pollen transfer is important to evaluate the level of generalisation/specialisation among plants and their pollinator partners.