Usually different plant species occur together within a community so that shared pollinators can mediate indirect interactions between the co-flowering plants. The floral neighbourhood can thus influence flower visitation and the pollination success of a plant. As pollination directly impacts plant fitness, pollinator-mediated associational effects between co-flowering plants are considered as a structuring force on plant community assembly processes. However, previous studies of pollinator mediated plant-plant interactions mainly addressed the effects of conspecific and heterospecific flower densities on pollinator visitation, and used only proxies related to plant reproduction. Here we connect the effects of the floral neighbourhood with flower visitation and seed production in an experimental grassland community of common flowering herb species. We assessed the actual degree of potential pollinator sharing between the plants and their floral neighbourhood to test how this affects flower visitation. Further, we link flower visitation to successful seed production.
Results/Conclusions
Preliminary results indicate that the plants overall benefit from sharing pollinators with their floral neighbourhood at a small scale. A high degree of pollinator sharing increased flower visitation rates of the focal plants which is linked to successful seed production. Overall, our results exemplify a facilitative interaction between plants and their neighbourhood. Such pollinator-mediated plant-neighbourhood feedbacks are an important mechanism to consider in plant community and applied ecology, intersecting plant invasions, the restoration or conservation of flowering plants and the establishment and management of flower habitats.