Data from: The gravity of pollination: integrating at-site features into spatial analysis of contemporary pollen movement.

Pollen-mediated gene flow is a major driver of spatial genetic structure in plant populations. Both individual plant characteristics and site-specific features of the landscape can modify the perceived attractiveness of plants to their pollinators and thus play an important role in shaping spatial genetic variation. Most studies of landscape-level genetic connectivity in plants have focused on the effects of inter-individual distance using spatial and increasingly ecological separation; yet have not incorporated individual plant characteristics or other at-site ecological variables. Using spatially explicit simulations, we first tested the extent to which the inclusion of at-site variables influencing local pollination success improved the statistical characterization of genetic connectivity based upon examination of pollen pool genetic structure. The addition of at-site characteristics provided better models than those that only considered inter-individual spatial distance (e.g., IBD). Models parameterized using conditional genetic covariance (e.g., Population Graphs) also outperformed those assuming panmixia. In a natural population of Cornus florida L. (Cornaceae), we showed that the addition of at-site characteristics (clumping of primary canopy opening above each maternal tree and maternal tree floral output) provided significantly better models describing gene flow than models including only between-site spatial (IBD) and ecological (Isolation By Resistance) variables. Overall, our results show that including inter-individual and local ecological variation greatly aids in characterizing landscape-level measures of contemporary gene flow.

花粉介导的基因流（Pollen-mediated gene flow）是驱动植物种群空间遗传结构的核心因素。植株个体特征与景观的生境特异性特征，均可改变植物对传粉者的吸引程度，进而在塑造空间遗传变异过程中发挥关键作用。目前绝大多数针对植物景观尺度遗传连通性的研究，均采用空间隔离及愈发受重视的生态隔离方法，聚焦于个体间距离的影响效应，却未纳入植株个体特征或其他局地生态变量。本研究借助空间显式模拟（spatially explicit simulations），首先通过解析花粉库遗传结构，检验纳入影响局地传粉成功的局地变量后，对遗传连通性的统计表征能提升至何种程度。相较于仅考虑个体间空间距离（如距离隔离，IBD）的模型，纳入局地特征的模型表现更优。基于条件遗传协方差构建参数的模型（如种群图谱，Population Graphs），同样优于假设随机交配（panmixia）的模型。在多花梾木（Cornus florida L.，山茱萸科Cornaceae）的自然种群中，我们证实，纳入局地特征（即每株母树上方主冠层开度的簇状分布与母树花量）的模型，要优于仅考虑样点间空间（距离隔离，IBD）与生态（抗性隔离，Isolation By Resistance）变量的模型，且差异具有统计学显著性。整体而言，本研究结果表明，纳入个体间与局地生态变异，可极大助力表征景观尺度的当代基因流水平。