Data from: Bee movement across heterogeneous tropical forests: multi-paternal genetic analyses reveal the importance of neighborhood composition for pollen-mediated gene flow

Animal pollination is critical for maintaining the reproduction and
genetic diversity of many plant species, especially those in tropical
ecosystems. Despite the threat to pollination posed by tropical
deforestation, it remains an understudied process. In particular, little
is known about these dynamics in multi-paternal, successional plant
species whose fruits can contain substantial genetic diversity. Given the
importance of successional plants in reforestation, quantifying the
factors that impact their reproduction is essential for understanding
plant gene flow in the context of global change. In this study, we
investigated pollen-mediated gene flow at the multi-paternal fruit level
to quantify how tropical pollinators navigate and mediate gene flow in
altered forests. Utilizing microsatellite genotyping and paternity
analyses, we revealed that distinct plant neighborhood and individual
factors drive pollen dispersal at the intra-fruit scale. Variance in
pollen dispersal distances was greater for neighborhoods with higher
conspecific density, indicating that density-dependent reproductive
patterns play a role at this scale. Additionally, both the diversity of
sires mediated by a single pollinator was affected by the size of the
mother tree, i.e. larger mothers received pollen from a less diverse, less
even pool of sires per fruit. Pollinator body size was not found to be a
significant driver of pollen dispersal, indicating that both small and
large-bodied pollinators were equally important pollen dispersers at this
scale. By exploring patterns of variation at the intra-fruit level, we
show that conspecific density and tree size significantly impact
multi-paternal pollen-mediated gene flow, reinforcing the importance of
investigating intraspecific, intra-individual variance in plant
reproduction.