Species morphology better predicts plant-hummingbird interactions across elevations than nectar traits

Species traits greatly influence interactions between plants and pollinators where floral nectar is the primary energy source fostering this mutualism. However, very little is known about how nectar traits mediate interactions in pollination networks compared to morphological traits. Here, we evaluated the role of morphological and nectar traits in shaping plant-hummingbird interaction networks along an elevation gradient. For this, we assessed patterns in floral phenotypic traits and network properties of plant species across elevations in Costa Rica. We also analysed whether plant species with generalised flower traits are ecological generalists and how morphological trait matching vs nectar traits affect interactions. We found marked variation in floral phenotypic traits and flower abundance of hummingbird-visited plant species across ten sites along the elevation gradient. We did not find evidence for a relationship between flower morphology and nectar traits or between morphologica..., Next, we include a summary of the methods and analyses we used in our study
Species morphological traits
We included in our analysis morphological traits of interacting species that have been reported to affect plant–hummingbird interactions. For plants, we measured total corolla length, corolla curvature and width of the corolla opening for 59 plant species. For hummingbirds, we measured total bill length (distance from tip to nostril) and curvature of 220 individuals belonging to 22 species (n = 10 per species). Measurements were taken from photos of fresh flowers and mist-netted hummingbird individuals in the field, complemented with museum specimens, and then processed with ImageJ software.
Nectar traits and flower abundance
We quantified daily nectar production and concentration per flower for common plant species visited by hummingbirds in the understory. We sampled these nectar traits from flowers that were bagged with nylon netting (~0.5-1 mm mesh size) prior to anthesis to prev..., , # Species morphology better predicts plant-hummingbird interactions across elevations than nectar traits

This repository contains three R scripts and a data folder with three CSV files. The R scripts are named \"Plant.species.level.1.R\", \"Plant.species.level.2.R\", and \"Interactions.level.R\". The scripts \"Plant.species.level.1.R\" and \"Plant.species.level.2.R\" use the CSV file \"1_Plant_level.csv\" as data, and the \"3_Interactions_level.R\" script uses the \"2_Interactions_level.csv\" file. The ‘trees.zip’ folder includes the 1000 phylogenetic trees needed for the phylogenetic models for analyses in “Plant.species.level.1.R” and “Plant.species.level.2.R”.

### Scripts

1. Plant.species.level.1.R: This script assesses patterns in floral phenotypic traits and flower abundance of plant species along an elevation gradient and to what extent flower morphology predicts nectar traits.
2. Plant.species.level.2.R: This script assesses the influence of phenotypic traits and elevation on ecological gener...