![]() Pollen limitation has ecological and evolutionary consequences that cascade through populations, communities and ecosystems. On global scales, land use change, climate change, and species invasions are altering the interactions between native pollinators and plants which may affect plant reproduction 10– 15. Furthermore, reports of global pollinator declines adds urgency to the key question of whether anthropogenic perturbations in the pollination or resource environment are increasing levels of pollen limitation 9. ovule number, reward size) to stochastic pollination environments 6– 8. For example, it is still not known to what extent pollen limitation represents temporal variability in either pollen receipt or resource availability 3– 5 or is a consequence of adaptations (e.g. ![]() Understanding the causes and consequences of pollen limitation is an active and accelerating area of research 2 ( Fig. Thus, the difference in reproductive output between supplemented and naturally pollinated groups can be used to calculate an effect size metric that reflects pollination sufficiency. The magnitude of pollen limitation is estimated from hand pollination experiments 1 if plants hand-pollinated with outcross pollen produce more seeds than plants in a naturally pollinated treatment, then reproduction is limited by aspects of pollen receipt rather than by abiotic resources. Thus, it is valuable to understand whether, and how strongly, seed production is limited by pollination. An inadequate quantity or quality of pollen can reduce plant reproductive success. Plants rely on abiotic and/or biotic agents to transport pollen grains to ovules for sexual reproduction. The GloPL database will be updated and curated with the aim of enabling the continued study of pollen limitation in natural ecosystems and highlighting significant gaps in our understanding of pollen limitation. The GloPL database brings together data from 2969 unique pollen supplementation experiments reported in 927 publications published from 1981 to 2015, allowing assessment of the strength and variability of pollen limitation in 1265 wild plant species across all biomes and geographic regions globally. manual outcross pollen addition without bagging) or manual outcrossing of bagged flowers, which excludes natural pollination. In a pollen supplementation experiment, fruit or seed production by flowers exposed to natural pollination is compared to that following hand pollination either by pollen supplementation (i.e. ![]() A key metric for characterizing if pollen receipt is insufficient for reproduction is pollen limitation, which is assessed by pollen supplementation experiments. ![]() Plant reproduction relies on transfer of pollen from anthers to stigmas, and the majority of flowering plants depend on biotic or abiotic agents for this transfer. ![]()
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