Phylogeny does not predict the outcome of heterospecific pollen-pistil interactions in a species-rich alpine plant community

Premise: Co-occurring plant species that share generalist pollinators often exchange pollen. This heterospecific pollen transfer (HPT) impacts male and female reproductive success through pollen loss and reductions in seed set, respectively. The resulting fitness cost of HPT imposes selection on reproductive traits (e.g. floral color and shape), yet we currently lack strong predictors for the post-pollination fate of heterospecific pollen, especially within community and phylogenetic contexts. 
Methods:  We investigated the fate of heterospecific pollen at three distinct stages of plant reproduction: 1) pollen germination on the stigma, 2) pollen tube growth in the style, and 3) fertilization of ovules. We experimentally crossed eleven naturally co-flowering species in the sub-alpine meadows of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, across a spectrum of phylogenetic relatedness. Using generalized linear mixed models and generalized linear models, we evaluated the effect of parental species ident..., This is the raw data from the experimental crossing study associated with Cohen et al. 2024 published in the American Journal of Botany. One of the experiments was a semi-in vivo crossing experiment, where we observed pollen tubes growing through sections of styles in petri dishes. We did an 11x11 cross, using 5 North American Pedicularis species and close- and distant-relatives that grow in the alpine plant communities they are a part of. We additionally did hand-pollinations in the field, then observed pollen tubes growing in styles by staining the styles with aniline blue. Finally, we measured the change in size of ovaries following the field-based hand pollinations.
In our study, we used generalized linear models and generalized linear mixed models to assess whether or not phylogenetic distance was a significant predictor of the outcome of heterospecific pollination at each of the three stages described above. For the semi-in vivo study we used the raw data to calculate a proportion..., , # Cohen et al. Experimental Crosses Results

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qv9s4mwqr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qv9s4mwqr)

## Description of the data and file structure

This data is associated with the publication \"Phylogeny does not predict the outcome of heterospecific pollen-pistil interactions in a species-rich alpine plant community\" (Cohen et al., 2024), published in the* American Journal of Botany*.

All of the data contained are the results from a series of cross-pollination experiments performed in the Colorado Rocky Mountains (Gothic, CO, USA) during the summers of 2022 and 2023. All information about study species are contained within the datasets.
### Files and variables

#### File: Cohen\_et\_al\_2024\_Datasets.xlsx

**Description:** File containing 5 individual sheets, each consisting of a dataset associated with one of the three parts of the study. The first sheet is a title sheet which will orient the reader to what is contained in sheets 2-5. The fifth sheet cont...