1. Understanding how species interactions, such as those between plants and their pollinators, are structured in human-transformed habitats is a key challenge in modern ecology. However, the relative importance of the drivers structuring interactions may vary depending on the ecological and environmental context. 2. We investigated the influence of three ecological drivers of plant-pollinator interactions in urban landscapes of a tropical metropolis: spatiotemporal overlap (species phenology within and across sites), interaction neutrality (species abundance) and trait matching (compatibility in morphological traits). We collected floral interaction data from different pollinator groups, including bees, butterflies, flies and wasps in distinct urban landscapes. 3. We found that spatiotemporal overlap and neutrality were the primary drivers of interactions, while trait matching had minimal effect, likely reflecting the predominance of generalist species in urban environments and reducing morphological constraints on species interactions. The observed negative correlation between neutrality and trait matching indicates that as the importance of species abundances increases, the influence of trait matching decreases. 4. When examined by pollinator groups, spatiotemporal overlap also emerged as the most important driver for bees and butterflies. However, we detected a seasonal variation where spatiotemporal overlap was relatively more important during the rainy season, while neutrality played a greater role in the dry season. This contrast may arise owed to differences in floral resource availability, which are scarcer during the dry season and when some mass flowering plants attract many of the available pollinators. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our study shows that the generalized structure of urban plant-pollinator interactions is mirrored in the mechanisms that shape them, as interactions are governed primarily by less restrictive drivers such as abundance and spatiotemporal overlap rather than by trait matching. To enhance the diversity of interactions, urban landscapes with a high diversity of plant species that bloom year-round and are attractive to different pollinator groups are needed. By doing so, tropical cities can ensure pollinators across seasons and foster interactions of different pollinator groups.

Biological invasions are a major driver of biodiversity loss. Invasive pollinators can reshape native plant-pollinator networks. This study, taking Chile as an example, is divided into two parts. First, we assessed the impacts of three non-native pollinator species (Apis mellifera, Bombus terrestris and Bombus ruderatus) using over 2,100 records from scientific literature (including historical data) and citizen-science databases. Interactions were classified by plant origin (native or non-native) and analysed to characterise species roles. We found that B. terrestris dominated the interactions (73%), primarily with non-native plants and all three species exhibited generalist interaction patterns. Then, we evaluated the impact of B. terrestris on bee-plant interactions by building bipartite networks representing periods before and after 2005, when B. terrestris began to be used in open fields. We analysed network metrics including nestedness, specialisation, modularity and core-periphery structure, revealing that B. terrestris increased interaction frequency, displaced native species such as Bombus dahlbomii and contributed to a more nested, but less specialised network. Overall, our findings reveal that invasive bees silently, but profoundly reshape pollination networks – displacing native pollinators, reducing interaction specialisation and shifting systems towards homogenised structures that threaten native plant-pollinator mutualisms.

BACKGROUND:Trait-based ecology has become central for understanding plant form, function and ecosystem processes, but progress has been hampered by biased representation in trait databases. As such, global trait syntheses remain strongly biased towards temperate forest biomes. Tropical savannas are the most extensive, biodiverse and disturbance-driven ecosystems worldwide, yet are poorly represented in functional trait databases, limiting ecological inference and applied decision-making. SCOPE:Here, we introduce the Cerrado Plant Traits (CPT), an open-access initiative compiling and standardising plant functional trait data for the Brazilian Cerrado, the world's most biodiverse tropical savanna. CPT integrates trait information for all major plant organs (whole-plant, root, shoot, leaf, flower, fruit and seed) across vegetation types in the Cerrado, drawing on a collaborative and inclusive research network. The current version of CPT compiles data from 148 datasets, totalling 113,859 curated trait records for 2,134 taxonomically verified species across 150 families. Trait records span pristine, degraded and restored environments and capture both interspecific and intraspecific variation. Whole-plant and leaf traits dominate the current dataset, while belowground and reproductive traits remain comparatively underrepresented, highlighting key priorities for future research. CONCLUSIONS:By substantially increasing the representation of savanna species in global trait repositories, CPT enables tests of ecological hypotheses across multiple levels of organization, analyses of trait-environment relationships across fire, soil and climatic gradients, and robust comparisons across forest-savanna transitions. Beyond its scientific value, CPT provides a practical, standardised resource to support conservation planning, restoration programs and evidence-based policy in a biodiversity hotspot facing accelerating land-use and climate pressures.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS:Understanding how floral diversity is structured at fine spatiotemporal scales and how pollinators respond to such dynamics is constrained by scarce high-resolution spatiotemporal data, particularly in highly biodiverse fire-prone tropical ecosystems. We aimed to investigate fine-scale spatial and temporal variation in flowering plant and bee assemblages in the Cerrado and to assess how fire influences different aspects of floral diversity and bee responses. METHODS:We conducted high-resolution sampling of 1-m² subplots monitored weekly across two flowering seasons encompassing a fire event in the Cerrado. At this fine-scale, we tested whether species turnover of bee-pollinated plants and bee assemblages was stronger across space or time. Using a Before-After Control-Impact design, we evaluated how fire affected the taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic structure of bee-pollinated plant assemblages, as well as bee occurrence, diversity, and visitation rates. KEY RESULTS:We found high fine-scale diversity with many unique flowering plant species combinations across space and time, reflecting the strong turnover typical of the Cerrado. Spatial distance predicted neither flower nor bee assemblage turnover, indicating that plant assemblages are structured by local post-fire conditions rather than dispersal limitation, with bees visiting flower patches haphazardly. In contrast, temporal turnover increased for both flowers and bees with broader temporal windows, reflecting phenological shifts during the flowering season. Fire restructured the fine-scale floral assemblages by increasing the occurrence of bee-pollinated plants while reducing local taxonomic richness and floral abundance, but maintaining functional and phylogenetic diversity, with cascading effects on bee occurrence, diversity, and visitation rates. CONCLUSIONS:Fire induced non-parallel effects across floral diversity dimensions, reshaping resource display and influencing pollinator dynamics. By revealing substantial variation in diversity at fine spatiotemporal scales, our results highlight the limitations of site-level or cross-sectional (snapshot) studies and underscore the ecological value of fine-scale heterogeneity in the Cerrado, as human-driven disturbances and management operate at these scales.

Human land use and land cover changes threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services, including pollination. Bees, which are key pollinators of many angiosperms, are particularly vulnerable to land use change. In this context, fragments of native vegetation can serve as crucial refuges for these insects, especially in heavily disturbed areas such as urban environments. In this study, we present an inventory of bee species found in green areas, such as parks and protected areas of a 2 million people tropical metropolis located in a highly biodiverse region, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. Bees were sampled at five sites using three different methods: active sampling, scent traps, and pan traps. We identified a total of 97 species belonging to the five families of bees found in Brazil, and most (79.3%) of them were sampled by only one of the sampling methods applied. The generalist native bee species Eulaema nigrita Lepeletier, 1841, Trigona spinipes (Fabricius, 1793), Paratrigona lineata (Lepeletier, 1836), and the invasive species Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758 were the most abundant at all sampling sites. The use of complementary sampling methods allowed the recording of highly diverse bee assemblages, one of the most complete lists so far in the region. This knowledge is the first step towards an integrated urban planning that also aims at the conservation of ecosystem services. Ultimately, this study shows that a more comprehensive description of pollinator fauna requires complementary sampling methods, which are essential for effective management and monitoring plans of urban biodiversity.

Bees play a pivotal role in terrestrial environments. Urbanization can affect these organisms and the ecosystem services they provide. However, knowledge of the global diversity of urban bees is limited. Thus, we summarized data on urban bee species identities and occurrences; compared distributions of all bees with those found in urban environments; described traits and resource collection across latitudinal regions; and determined species' conservation status. We identified 1981 urban bee species, representing 9.5% of overall diversity. Nontropical regions had more studies and higher bee richness than tropical regions, indicating geographical bias. Family distributions of urban bees were similar to those observed for overall bee diversity. The Apidae family accounted for 35.1% of urban species worldwide. In the tropics, Apidae accounted for 69.0%. Most urban bees of the world were solitary (49.8%) and social (33.8%) (eusocial, 4.7%; kleptoparasite, 11%), were medium (41.8%) to small sized (36.2%), nested in soil rather than cavities (65.0%), and had the capacity to perform buzz pollination (65.0%). Only a small proportion of bees collected specialized resources (oil, 3.2%; resin, 12.1%; fragrance, 2.9%) and plant material (10.7%). Due to the dominance of Apidae, this situation differed in the tropics, where there was a higher degree of social (42.9%) and eusocial habits (20.1%), more large-sized species (42.9%), more cavity-nesting species (62.7%), and especially a higher representation of specialized resource collection, including oil (10.7%), resin (44.2%), and fragrance (17.6%). Most species (96.4%) had not had their conservation status evaluated. Our results showed that urban environments worldwide can support a high taxonomic and functional diversity of bees, but that this capacity differed across latitudes. Our findings can be used to inform management strategies that promote suitable nesting sites and provide specific resources for bees in each global region, making cities more bee friendly and maintaining the ecosystem services bees provide.

Pollination is a key ecological process sustaining biodiversity and food security, yet global patterns of plant–pollinator specialisation have remained unresolved. Using the largest global dataset of quantitative networks (>3,400 networks, >110,000 interactions), we show that the latitudinal specialisation gradient (LSG) exists, but it is non-linear, hemispherically asymmetric, and strongly taxon-dependent. Network-level and pollinator specialisation were lowest in the tropics and peaked at northern mid-latitudes, whereas plants tended to become more specialised toward higher latitudes. Climate consistently outperformed latitude, species richness, and environmental productivity as a predictor of these patterns. Specialisation declined with increasing temperature, rose with moderate rainfall before declining at the wettest sites, and increased with temperature seasonality, but plants and pollinators responded differently to these drivers. Functional groups diverged strongly: ectothermic insects were most specialised in cooler, seasonal climates, while birds showed weaker links to latitude but reduced specialisation in wetter regions. These findings demonstrate that climate, rather than latitude or species richness, structures global variation in specialisation. Because warmer and less seasonal climates promote generalisation, climate change is likely to disrupt the most specialised pollination systems, unevenly across taxa and regions, with important consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem stability. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Czech Science Foundation, https://ror.org/01pv73b02, 21-24186M, 19-14620S Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, https://ror.org/012kf4317, 1134644 São Paulo Research Foundation, 2023/03083-6, 2023/02881-6, 2023/17728-9 Consulate General of France in São Paulo Bavarian State Ministry of Science and Art Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Center for Research on Biodiversity Dynamics and Climate Change CEPID-FAPESP, 2021/10639-5 National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, CNPq, 308559/2022-3, 141736/2020-8, 311665/2022-5, 400904/2019-5, 423939/2021-1, 310508/2019-3, 309893/2023-2, 177005/2024-6, 305204/2024-6 CAPES, Finance Code 001; COOPBRASS: 88887.947041/2024-00, 177005/2024-6, PROEX 88882.347259/2019-01 Brazilian Biodiversity Fund, FunBio, 004/2021, 029/2022 Rufford Foundation, https://ror.org/02bxrrf91, 377031, 28478-1 German Research Foundation DFG, 152112243 Dirección General de Investigación, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 4.8.63.2.27-2012, 4.8.63.8.60-2018, 4.8.63.4.41-2020 FAPEMIG, RED-00039-23 INCT Pollination (CNPq/CAPES/FAPERJ Call 58/2022) Faculty for Future, Schlumberger Foundation the Human Frontier Science Program, RGP023/2023 European Research Council ERC, 101054177, 819374 Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, KAW 2019.0202 LIFE project Olivares Vivos+, LIFE20 NAT/ES/001487 Missouri Department of Conservation, K02442-PI0242-022 National Science Foundation, DGE-2244337 OAPN, 014/2009 CONAHCYT, CBF2023-2024-216 Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, PID2021-127900NB-I00, PGC2018-098498-A-100, RYC2021-032351-I Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection, 121-5-13 German Research Foundation DFG, FZT 118, 202548816

While urbanization is known for its adverse effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, urban vegetation has been shown to support diverse bee communities. Still, the drivers behind such biodiversity remain poorly understood, especially regarding the effects of urbanization on bees’ functional traits and their interactions with plants. Here, we investigated how bees’ taxonomic diversity, functional traits, and their interactions with plants are structured across a tropical urban landscape. We found that generalist bees dominated the landscape, accounting for 79% of all observed interactions. Plant species richness positively influenced bee richness, while bee abundance was positively influenced by plant species richness and negatively by the proportion of native plants. Urbanization predictors affected bee traits, with highly eusocial and above-ground nesting bees declining as plant richness increased, while ground-nesters increased. Generalist bees responded positively to higher proportions of impermeable surfaces, while specialists were negatively affected. Larger bees were more abundant in landscapes with higher diversity of plants. Irrespective of these changes, bee-plant interaction networks were unaffected by urbanization intensity, suggesting some stability for pollination services in these spaces. These findings highlight the complex ways in which specific bee traits are filtered out or benefited in urban communities and emphasize the necessity of considering the link between specific urbanization drivers and functional traits when planning bee-friendly urban landscapes.

Pollination is a key ecological interaction providing fundamental ecosystem services, as most food items we consume depend on biotic pollination. However, a pollination crisis has become evident in the last decades because of multiple anthropogenic biodiversity loss drivers. Agricultural expansion, agrochemicals, invasive species, and climate change are altering plant-pollinator interaction dynamics. Chile is a large food-producing country undergoing an ‘anthropogenic intensification’ as its economic development is being made at expense of its biodiversity. Based on a large database comprising four decades of plant-pollinator interactions, we used a network approach to characterize their spatiotemporal variation, considering two major events: the introduction of the exotic bumblebee Bombus terrestris in 2000 (becoming invasive), and the 2010–2020 megadrought that affected South-Central Chile. Most plant-pollinator records were concentrated in Central and South regions, where cultivated lands occur, while pollination studies in North and Patagonia regions are scarce and insufficient to perform further analyses. We analyzed 2108 interactions across time using four 10-year periods between 1980 and 2020. The most frequent plant families and pollinator orders changed over time, with hummingbirds and hoverflies more common before 2000 and bees afterward. We observed spatiotemporal changes in network specialization, modularity, and nestedness, matching B. terrestris introduction and the mega-drought. Modularity was significant in all cases, as non-random associations occurred between plant and pollinator groups, but it showed changes as exotic generalist bees became dominant. Analyzing historical data is a valuable tool to understand the effects of human activities on ecological interactions, and also to forecast future effects informing decision-making and providing evidence to prioritize conservation efforts.

Niche partitioning is one of the key mechanisms allowing species coexistence and is especially relevant in species‐rich communities. For pollinators, morphology is a major axis in which species differentiate their foraging niche, as it influences the match with flower morphology. Bumblebees Bombus spp. are important pollinators globally, showing their highest diversity of co‐occurring species in the Hengduan Mountains region of southwestern China. This community context makes this region an ideal model system to test the importance of niche partitioning for plant–pollinator interactions. In high‐elevation, flower‐rich meadows, we sampled over four years pollinator–plant interaction networks containing 12 sympatric bumblebee species, varying more than fourfold in tongue length from 4.7 to 21.7 mm. We then assessed the degree of niche partitioning occurring between these bumblebees. We analysed bumblebees' foraging niche widths and overlap, and found that species with longer tongues foraged from a narrower range of flowers. Accordingly, bumblebee species with shorter tongues, who visited a higher diversity of flowering species also showed consistently higher floral overlap with other bumblebee species across years. Despite this morphology‐driven niche pattern for species, the interaction network was consistently characterised by a high degree of generalisation across the years. Our results indicate that the co‐occurrence of a large number of potentially competing pollinators with high generalisation and niche overlap is possible in flower‐rich habitats. We suggest that, in regions of extraordinarily high plant and pollinator diversity and abundance, diverse pollinator communities may also be maintained without strong foraging niche partitioning.

Urbanization poses significant threats to pollinators, but they may respond differently to habitat modification according to their nesting and foraging requirements. Despite the diversity of pollinator groups and species found in urban areas, research often focus on bees, neglecting other groups. Whether bee response to urbanization suffice in representing the wider pollinator spectrum, however, is poorly understood. Here, we examined how urbanization impacts the interaction networks between plants and different pollinator groups and evaluated the dissimilarities of urban green spaces at both local and regional scales within a Neotropical metropolis. Recording 1,404 interactions between 262 plant and 220 pollinator species, we found that network specialization varied among pollinator groups but was not affected by urban impervious surface cover. Such lack of difference may happen owing to the prevalence of generalist species across urban environments. Importantly, urban green spaces showed high dissimilarities in species and interactions, emphasizing the heterogeneity found across the urban landscape. Plant composition also varied between urban green spaces and was strongly correlated with interaction dissimilarities, indicating that floral resources contribute to unique interactions found in different areas. Our results suggest that although important, bees alone do not represent the wider response of pollinators to urbanization. Furthermore, the high dissimilarities influenced by site specific plant-pollinator co-occurrence underscore that multiple and connected green spaces are required to safeguard plant-pollinator interaction diversity and its vital ecosystem function in cities.

Pollinators provide essential ecosystem services worldwide, but dependence on biotic pollination is higher in the tropics, where urbanization is expected to impact biodiversity more severely.Here, we present a global review on urban pollinator studies with emphasis on the tropics.From the 308 published studies that included information on pollinator groups, only ~25 % were conducted in tropical regions, while ~65 % were carried out in the non-tropical northern hemisphere.This overall trend was similar for all the major insect pollinator groups, but not for vertebrates, which were overall less studied in both tropical and non-tropical regions.The effects of urbanization on tropical pollinators are diverse and complex and likely depend on the extent and type of urbanization, as well as the pollinator taxa studied.For both insect and vertebrate pollinators, the existing studies suggest that tropical cities can support generalist species tolerant of human activity, but the lack of studies hampers other general conclusions.The underrepresentation of pollinator studies in tropical cities undermines the value of urban biodiversity conservation in the most biodiverse regions of the world and highlights a missing opportunity.Since promoting urban biodiversity benefits both nature and people, it could be especially relevant in the Global South, where economic and social inequalities are severe and pollinator conservation may contribute to sustainability goals.In this context, initiatives that foster more international collaborations and research in the tropics are essential for a better understanding of the effects of urbanization and the value of pollinators in urban areas.Such knowledge can provide the basis for better urban planning strategies that contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of pollination services in tropical cities.

Functional traits determine interactions between plants and pollinators, and to increase pollination efficiency, many plants have evolved traits to attract specific pollinator groups. However, biogeographical setting may influence trait evolution and biotic interactions. For instance, plants pollinated by hummingbirds often have ornithophilous traits, that is, flowers with elongated corollas, dilute nectar and red colours, but—due to colonization history, depauperate biotas and unstable environmental conditions—it might be disadvantageous for species to rely on mutualistic partners with specific functional traits on oceanic islands. Hummingbird‐visited plants on islands are thus expected to have fewer ornithophilous traits and be functionally less diverse in their interactions with hummingbirds. We compiled an extensive dataset of plant—hummingbird interactions (1030 plant and 181 hummingbird species) and associated functional traits. We divided the data into four biogeographical regions across the American mainland and the Caribbean islands and then tested whether biogeographical regions differed in the proportion of ornithophilous floral traits and functional diversity of plant—hummingbird interactions. We found that hummingbird‐visited plant communities of the Caribbean islands displayed the lowest proportion of traits typically associated with a functional adaptation towards bird‐mediated pollination, with on average the shortest corollas, the highest nectar concentrations and the largest proportion of non‐ornithophilous colours. Contrary to our expectations, plants in the Caribbean interacted with hummingbirds that were morphologically more distinct than the plants of mainland regions. Overall, we document a strong imprint of insularity on floral traits and interactions with hummingbirds. While hummingbird‐visited plants in the Caribbean displayed floral traits that support island theory, predicting less specific pollination systems on oceanic islands, the functional diversity of plant–hummingbird interactions in the Caribbean communities was higher than on the mainland, possibly driven by competition over resources. These results highlight the influence of insularity on functional traits and plant–pollinator interactions. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The Brazilian Cerrado is a continental-wide biodiversity hotspot and the most species-rich savanna ecosystem in the world. The main aspect characterising this biodiversity is that the landscape is arranged as an intricate mosaic of different plant formations, including grasslands, savannas, and forests, each harbouring distinct but interconnected communities. Seasonality and natural fires are key and ancient natural factors in the biome, with organisms showing many adaptations. The Cerrado is also home to millions of people, and the essential ecosystem services provided for agricultural production make it one of the world's major crop regions. However, it has undergone intense destruction in the last decades, with conservation concerns historically overshadowed by the neighbouring Amazonia and Atlantic Forest biomes. Considering the importance of pollination and plant reproduction for maintaining terrestrial ecosystems, we synthesise the known information for the Cerrado as an illustrative example that could be applied to other megadiverse ecosystems worldwide. Although apomixis (asexual seed formation) and self-pollination mechanisms occur to a lesser extent, most plants in the Cerrado require biotic pollination. For instance, this is the case for some dioecious and monoecious species. However, the majority of plants have bisexual flowers, with the frequency of self-incompatibility increasing towards denser plant formations such as forests, illustrating differences in dependency on pollination across habitats. Many Cerrado plants adopt strategies favouring outcrossing, including distyly, enantiostyly, heteranthery, and dichogamy. Although plant-pollinator interaction networks are mostly generalised, the pollinators are organised into guilds, with bees pollinating most plants and using several resources. Other common guilds include beetles, moths, hummingbirds, and bats. Importantly, flowering phenology peaks across plant formations at different times of the year, creating habitat complementarity across the vegetation mosaic that continuously sustains transiting pollinators. Thus, the interaction between plants and pollinators connects and is sustained by landscape complexity, which should be regarded as essential for ecosystem conservation. In this context, periodic fires that trigger massive flowering and promote biomass reduction are an essential natural disturbance that maintains the diversity of open landscapes. The interdependence of plants and pollinators in the face of the ongoing destruction of the Cerrado adds another challenge for its conservation, and highlights the necessity for conserving complementary habitats at the landscape level. While forest formations are granted protection by law, these alone are insufficient to maintain high pollinator diversity, with potential cascading effects on the ecosystem services they provide and requiring the maintenance of the neglected grasslands and savannas. Thus, the simultaneous conservation and restoration of the mosaic plant formations across the landscape will be crucial for the future of the Cerrado.

The diversity of fruits and frugivorous species is especially high in tropical regions where frugivory and seed dispersal interactions are particularly critical for the structure and functioning of terrestrial communities. However, the increasing urbanization in tropical areas has caused profound landscape changes, affecting species interactions and associated ecosystems functions. Here, we present an overview of the studies on frugivory and seed dispersal in tropical urban areas, discussing emergent patterns and processes underlying plant-frugivore interactions as well as major research gaps. Our review highlights an uneven geographical distribution of studies, which are more frequent in the Neotropics in comparison to Indomalayan and Afrotropical regions. We found that in tropical urban areas: (i) the most frequently studied group are flying frugivores (birds and bats), (ii) fruits of Myrtaceae, Moraceae, and Arecaceae are most frequently reported as consumed by frugivores, (iii) introduced plants are often present in frugivores’ diets, and become more common with urbanization, (iv) frugivores niche breadths vary with seasonality in fruit availability, (v) a higher diversity of fruits are consumed by frugivores in (or near) habitats that preserve more natural characteristics, such as higher proportion of green areas. Since suitable habitats within cities are highly variable in size, shape, connectivity, patterns of human activity, vegetation management and socioeconomic contexts, we recommend future studies to sample gradients in such variables. Furthermore, as new urban areas are often planned in advance, ‘before-after impact’ studies may be particularly insightful to understand how frugivores respond to urbanization and how to create frugivore-friendly areas without promoting undesirable (invasive) plants. Although the scarcity of studies and their geographical bias limit generalizations across distinct tropical regions, based on our review we provide a preliminary list of broad recommendations of management practices towards creating biodiversity-friendly urban areas.

Biotic pollination is a key ecosystem function, as 85 % of all Angiosperms depend on interactions with animals for reproduction. Anthropogenic impacts have caused a decrease in biodiversity, affecting species interactions and their conservation. Initiatives to evaluate species' conservation value usually do not consider the species interactions organized in a nonrandom pattern. Here we used network approaches to evaluate the role of endemic and/or threatened species in plant-pollinator interactions from a highly diverse and endangered tropical mountain grassland ecosystem, the campo rupestre. We asked how the mutualistic interactions are organized, which are the main species structuring the network, and whether endemic and/or threatened species are among the main species structuring the mutualistic interactions. The plant-pollinator network had 481 species performing 1264 interactions. Twenty species are under threat and 42 are endemic. Through the categorization of species according to modularity roles and core-periphery status in the network, we created a conservation priority list with nine plant and pollinator species. Endemic plants, the native bumblebee Bombus pauloensis, and small and short-tongued bees, as well as hummingbirds, were identified as crucial for network cohesiveness. The introduced honeybee Apis mellifera emerged as an important species through network analysis, and its role in the community dynamic deserves further investigation. Our study illustrates the usefulness of network approaches in combination with ancillary data, such as species threat status and endemism, to guide conservation efforts in highly biodiverse and threatened tropical ecosystems.

Ecological network approaches have advanced our understanding of how species interactions influence community and evolutionary dynamics. However, a key limitation is that most network analyses rely solely on visitation data, often overlooking functional aspects of interactions. Here, we combined quantitative (visitation frequency) and qualitative (pollen removal and deposition) components to assess bee interactions with buzz-pollinated flowers in the field. We recorded bee visitation to Chamaecrista (Fabaceae) flowers to represent the quantitative component and conducted single-visit experiments to evaluate qualitative components related to male and female reproductive performances. Data were integrated into ecological networks to explore the structure of plant-pollinator interactions. Across 1838 interactions involving 10 plant species, flower-buzzing bees were the most effective pollen depositors, while robbers removed large amounts of pollen but frequently damaged floral structures. Network analyses revealed that male performance components generated more specialised and modular networks than those based on visitation or female performance, highlighting functional differences among bee groups. While visitation networks offered partial insights, inclusion of pollination effectiveness metrics revealed the importance of specialised vibration behaviours in plant reproductive performance. We emphasise integration of both quantitative and qualitative data to better predict ecological and evolutionary dynamics in specialised pollination systems.

The impact of land use changes on ecosystem services (ES) or Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) is relatively well-known, but the influence of socioeconomic changes on ES remains less clear, especially at larger spatial scales. Multiple socioeconomic factors influence the demand for a service (i.e. higher economic income and human development can increase demand for ES) and the provision of such service (i.e. environmental policies and cultural relationships with nature may enhance access to ES). Such complex relationships require a multidimensional approach to understand the socioeconomic drivers of change of ES. We investigated how socioeconomic drivers affect demand, diversity and provision of crop pollination service. Our Brazil-wide assessment spans a decade (2006-17) and encompasses a period of rapid land use intensification and concentration of land ownership. Our results revealed that the replacement of small and diverse pollinator-dependent farming systems by large pollinator-dependent monocultures has led to deficits in crop pollination services, with demand increasing by 3.3% while diversity and provision have decreased by 16.1 and 22.5%, respectively. These changes are linked to increased wealth concentration and social inequality, as regions that presented concentrated land ownership and limited access to credit were associated with reduced pollination provision. Our study provided a country-wide quantitative assessment of socioeconomic drivers of change in ES to reveal an association between social inequality and reduced ES provision.

Linear habitats, such as roadsides, are increasingly recognized as potential refuges for pollinator diversity and the ecosystem services they provide. Understanding the role of these habitats is essential for their effective management, contributing to biodiversity conservation and the resilience of agricultural systems. Here, we assessed the potential of roadside vegetation in a biodiverse savanna in Brazil to sustain pollination services for adjacent agricultural areas. We analyzed tree and shrub diversity from preserved savanna areas and roadsides in the Brazilian Cerrado, integrating pollination system data obtained through an extensive literature review. Our results show that all pollination systems associated with woody plants in protected areas were similarly present in roadside vegetation, except hummingbird, butterfly, and bee pollination, which were slightly less represented on roadsides. However, the decrease in bee pollination on roadsides amounted to only 7 %. Additionally, we identified 24 native plant species along roadsides that are pollinated by key bee species responsible for pollinating major crops in the region, including coffee, soybean, and tomato. Our findings underscore the potential of roadsides to support both pollinator conservation and agricultural productivity, which is particularly relevant given the growing demand for pollination services in Brazil and worldwide. To maximize these benefits, it is crucial to strengthen environmental policies, maintain adequate roadside width, and identify restoration hotspots and target species with special benefits for pollinators and ecosystem services.