Plant‐centred sampling estimates higher beta diversity of interactions than pollinator‐based sampling across habitats

What is it about?

We can sample plants and pollinators in two ways: by observing pollinator visits to flowers, or by collecting pollen attached to the pollinator's body. In this study, we show that the use of these different methods can lead to different results on how plants and pollinators interact in communities. However, we show for the first time, that plant-centred networks resulted in higher beta diversity of interactions in space than animal-centred networks, which was mainly due to interaction turnover. Moreover, floral traits modulated the effects of sampling method on species-level network metrics.

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