Data from: Foraging efficiency and size matching in a plant – pollinator community: the importance of sugar content and tongue length

A longstanding question in ecology is how species interactions are
structured within communities. Although evolutionary theory predicts close
size matching between floral nectar tube depth and pollinator proboscis
length of interacting species, such size matching has seldom been shown
and explained in multispecies assemblages. Here, we investigated the
degree of size matching among Asteraceae and their pollinators and its
relationship with foraging efficiency. The majority of pollinators,
especially Hymenoptera, choose plant species on which they had high
foraging efficiencies. When proboscides were shorter than nectar tubes,
foraging efficiency rapidly decreased because of increased handling time.
When proboscides were longer than nectar tubes, a decreased nectar reward
rather than an increased handling time made shallow flowers more
inefficient to visit. Altogether, this led to close size matching.
Overall, our results show the importance of nectar reward and handling
time as drivers of plant – pollinator network structure.