Data from: Abundance drives broad patterns of generalisation in plant-hummingbird pollination networks

Abundant pollinators are often more generalised than rare pollinators.
This could be because abundant species have more chance encounters with
potential interaction partners. On the other hand, generalised species
could have a competitive advantage over specialists, leading to higher
abundance. Determining the direction of the abundance-generalisation
relationship is therefore a ‘chicken-and-egg’ dilemma. Here we determine
the direction of the relationship between abundance and generalisation in
plant-hummingbird pollination networks across the Americas. We find
evidence that hummingbird pollinators are generalised because they are
abundant, and little evidence that hummingbirds are abundant because they
are generalised. Additionally, most patterns of species-level abundance
and generalisation were well explained by a null model that assumed
interaction neutrality (interaction probabilities defined by species
relative abundances). These results suggest that neutral processes play a
key role in driving broad patterns of generalisation in animal pollinators
across large spatial scales.