Individual flowering phenology shapes plant-pollinator interactions across ecological scales affecting plant reproduction

1. The balance of pollination competition and facilitation amongst co-flowering plants and abiotic resource availability can modify plant species and individual reproduction. Floral resource succession and spatial heterogeneity modulate plant-pollinator interactions across ecological scales (individual plant, local assemblage, interaction network of agroecological infrastructure across the farm). Intraspecific variation in flowering phenology can modulate the precise level of spatio-temporal heterogeneity in floral resources, pollen donor density and pollinator interactions that a plant individual is exposed to, thereby affecting reproduction.
2. We tested how abiotic resources and multi-scale plant-pollinator interactions affected individual plant seed set, modulated by intraspecific variation in flowering phenology and spatio-temporal floral heterogeneity arising from agroecological infrastructure. We transplanted two focal insect-pollinated plant species (Cyanus segetum and Centaurea..., The data were collected in May-September 2019 on a farm-scale agroecological experiment (INRAE CA-SYS platform) in Burgundy, France (47°19'06.7\"N 5°04'17.6\"E), with the aim of studying the influences of multi-scale plant-pollinator interactions on wild plant reproduction in agroecological infrastructures. Each experimental unit in the dataset is an individual C. segetum (n = 144) or an individual C. jacea (n = 144) plant. All 288 focal plants were transplanted in 16 agroecological infrastructures across the farm (10 wildflower strips and 6 grass/legume strips).
Surveys on the field included:
* monthly focal plant development monitoring (counting of composite flowers, fruits,...);
* monthly botanical surveys : 6 quadrats of 2m x 50cm along a transect of 100m x 2m centered on the focal plot (n = 16 transects), identification of flowering plant species + counting of individuals and floral units per plant species;
* bimonthly surveys of plant-pollinator interactions on the focal plants (plo..., Microsoft Excel