Floral volatiles structure plant-pollinator interactions in a diverse community across the growing season

1. While the importance of floral odors for pollinator attraction relative to visual cues is increasingly appreciated, how they structure community-level plant-pollinator interactions is poorly understood. Elucidating the functional roles of flowering plant species with respect to their floral volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and how those roles vary over the growing season is an initial step towards understanding the contribution of floral VOCs to plant-pollinator interaction structure. 2. We sampled the floral VOCs, phenologies, and bee visitors of naturally-growing plants in a montane meadow in the Northern Rocky Mountains of USA in order to acquire a base understanding of how floral VOCs and other plant traits may structure plant-pollinator interactions across the growing season. We expected forb species with floral VOCs that were original (far from the community mean) and unique (far from the nearest neighbor) would have few pollinating partners (i.e., specialists), while forbs ...