Between‐year changes in community composition shape species’ roles in an Arctic plant–pollinator network

Inter‐annual turnover in community composition can affect the richness and functioning of ecological communities. If incoming and outgoing species do not interact with the same partners, ecological functions such as pollination may be disrupted. Here, we explore the extent to which turnover affects species’ roles – as defined based on their participation in different motifs positions – in a series of temporally replicated plant–pollinator networks from high‐Arctic Zackenberg, Greenland. We observed substantial turnover in the plant and pollinator assemblages, combined with significant variation in species’ roles between networks. Variation in the roles of plants and pollinators tended to increase with the amount of community turnover, although a negative interaction between turnover in the plant and pollinator assemblages complicated this trend for the roles of pollinators. This suggests that increasing turnover in the future will result in changes to the roles of plants and likely those of pollinators. These changing roles may in turn affect the functioning or stability of this pollination network.     

The temporal dimension in individual‐based plant pollination networks

The pollination success of animal‐pollinated plants depends on the temporal coupling between flowering schedules and pollinator availability. Within a population, individual plants exhibiting disparate flowering schedules will be exposed to different pollinators when the latter exhibit temporal turnover. The temporal overlap between individual plants and pollinators will result in a turnover of interactions, which can be analyzed through a network approach. We have explored the temporal dynamics of individual‐based plant networks resulting from pairwise similarities in pollinator composition. During two flowering seasons, we surveyed the phenology and pollinator fauna of the individual plants from a population of Erysimum mediohispanicum (Brassicaceae). We analyzed the topology of these networks by means of their modularity, clustering, and core–periphery structure. These metrics are related to network functional properties such as cohesion, transitivity and centralization respectively. Afterwards, we analyzed the influence of each pollinator functional group on network topology. We found that network topology varied widely over time as a consequence of the differences in plant phenology and the idiosyncratic and contextual effect of pollinators. When integrating all temporary networks, the network became cohesive (non modular), transitive (locally clusterized), and centralized (core–periphery topology). These topologies could entail important consequences for plant reproduction. Our results highlight the importance of considering the entire flowering season and the necessity of making comprehensive temporal sampling when trying to build reliable interaction networks.     

Species traits and abundances predict metrics of plant–pollinator network structure,but not pairwise interactions

Plant–pollinator mutualistic networks represent the ecological context of foraging (for pollinators) and reproduction (for plants and some pollinators). Plant–pollinator visitation networks exhibit highly conserved structural properties across diverse habitats and species assemblages. The most successful hypotheses to explain these network properties are the neutrality and biological constraints hypotheses, which posit that species interaction frequencies can be explained by species relative abundances, and trait mismatches between potential mutualists respectively. However, previous network analyses emphasize the prediction of metrics of qualitative network structure, which may not represent stringent tests of these hypotheses. Using a newly documented temporally explicit alpine plant–pollinator visitation network, we show that metrics of both qualitative and quantitative network structure are easy to predict, even by models that predict the identity or frequency of species interactions poorly. A variety of phenological and morphological constraints as well as neutral interactions successfully predicted all network metrics tested, without accurately predicting species observed interactions. Species phenology alone was the best predictor of observed interaction frequencies. However, all models were poor predictors of species pairwise interaction frequencies, suggesting that other aspects of species biology not generally considered in network studies, such as reproduction for dipterans, play an important role in shaping plant–pollinator visitation network structure at this site. Future progress in explaining the structure and dynamics of mutualistic networks will require new approaches that emphasize accurate prediction of species pairwise interactions rather than network metrics, and better reflect the biology underlying species interactions.     

Relative stability of core groups in pollination networks in a biodiversity hotspot over four years

Plants and their pollinators form pollination networks integral to the evolution and persistence of species in communities. Previous studies suggest that pollination network structure remains nested while network composition is highly dynamic. However, little is known about temporal variation in the structure and function of plant-pollinator networks, especially in species-rich communities where the strength of pollinator competition is predicted to be high. Here we quantify temporal variation of pollination networks over four consecutive years in an alpine meadow in the Hengduan Mountains biodiversity hotspot in China. We found that ranked positions and idiosyncratic temperatures of both plants and pollinators were more conservative between consecutive years than in non-consecutive years. Although network compositions exhibited high turnover, generalized core groups--decomposed by a k-core algorithm--were much more stable than peripheral groups. Given the high rate of turnover observed, we suggest that identical plants and pollinators that persist for at least two successive years sustain pollination services at the community level. Our data do not support theoretical predictions of a high proportion of specialized links within species-rich communities. Plants were relatively specialized, exhibiting less variability in pollinator composition at pollinator functional group level than at the species level. Both specialized and generalized plants experienced narrow variation in functional pollinator groups. The dynamic nature of pollination networks in the alpine meadow demonstrates the potential for networks to mitigate the effects of fluctuations in species composition in a high biodiversity area.     

Year‐to‐year variation in the topology of a plant–pollinator interaction network

Vigorous discussion of the degree of specialization in pollination interactions, combined with advances in the analysis of complex networks, has revitalized the study of entire plant–pollinator communities. Noticeably rare, however, are attempts to quantify temporal variation in the structure of plant–pollinator networks, and to determine whether the status of species as specialists or generalists is stable. Here we show that network structure varied through time in a montane meadow community from southern California, USA, in that pollinator species did not form the same links with plant species across years. Furthermore, composition of the generalized core group of species in the network varied among summers, as did the identity of those species involved in relationships that appeared to be reciprocally specialized within any one summer. These differences appear to be related to severe drought conditions experienced in the second summer of the 3 year study. In contrast to this variation, the pollinator community remained similarly highly nested in all three summers, even though species were packed into the nested matrix differently from year to year. These results suggest that plant–pollinator networks vary in detail through time, while retaining some basic topological properties. This dynamic aspect of community‐scale interactions has implications for both ecological and evolutionary inferences about pollination mutualisms.     

Niche partitioning due to adaptive foraging reverses effects of nestedness and connectance on pollination network stability

Much research debates whether properties of ecological networks such as nestedness and connectance stabilise biological communities while ignoring key behavioural aspects of organisms within these networks. Here, we computationally assess how adaptive foraging (AF) behaviour interacts with network architecture to determine the stability of plant–pollinator networks. We find that AF reverses negative effects of nestedness and positive effects of connectance on the stability of the networks by partitioning the niches among species within guilds. This behaviour enables generalist pollinators to preferentially forage on the most specialised of their plant partners which increases the pollination services to specialist plants and cedes the resources of generalist plants to specialist pollinators. We corroborate these behavioural preferences with intensive field observations of bee foraging. Our results show that incorporating key organismal behaviours with well‐known biological mechanisms such as consumer‐resource interactions into the analysis of ecological networks may greatly improve our understanding of complex ecosystems.     

传粉网络的研究进展:网络的结构和动态

植物与传粉者之间相互作用,构成了复杂的传粉网络。近年来,社会网络分析技术的发展使得复杂生态网络的研究成为可能。从群落水平上研究植物与传粉者之间的互惠关系,为理解群落的结构和动态以及花部特征的演化提供了全新的视角。传粉网络的嵌套结构说明自然界的传粉服务存在冗余,而且是相对泛化的物种主导了传粉。在多年或者多季度的传粉网络中,虽然有很高的物种替换率,但是其网络结构仍然保持相对稳定,说明传粉网络对干扰有很强的抗性。尽管有关网络结构和动态的研究逐渐增多,但传粉网络维持的机制仍不清楚。网络结构可以部分由花部特征与传粉者的匹配来解释,也受到系统发生的制约,影响因素还包括群落构建的时间和物种多样性,以及物种在群落中的位置。开展大尺度群落动态的研究,为探索不同时间尺度、不同物种多样性水平上的传粉网络的生态学意义提供了条件。但已有的研究仍存在不足,比如基于访问观察的网络无法准确衡量传粉者的访问效率和植物间的花粉流动,以及结果受到调查精度区域研究不平衡的制约等。目前的研究只深入到传粉者携带花粉构成成分的水平,传粉者访问植物的网络不能代表植物的整个传粉过程。因此,研究应当更多地深入到物种之间关系对有性生殖的切实影响上。     

Pyrodiversity begets plant–pollinator community diversity

Fire has a major impact on the structure and function of many ecosystems globally. Pyrodiversity, the diversity of fires within a region (where diversity is based on fire characteristics such as extent, severity, and frequency), has been hypothesized to promote biodiversity, but changing climate and land management practices have eroded pyrodiversity. To assess whether changes in pyrodiversity will have impacts on ecological communities, we must first understand the mechanisms that might enable pyrodiversity to sustain biodiversity, and how such changes might interact with other disturbances such as drought. Focusing on plant–pollinator communities in mixed‐conifer forest with frequent fire in Yosemite National Park, California, we examine how pyrodiversity, combined with drought intensity, influences those communities. We find that pyrodiversity is positively related to the richness of the pollinators, flowering plants, and plant–pollinator interactions. On average, a 5% increase in pyrodiversity led to the gain of approximately one pollinator and one flowering plant species and nearly two interactions. We also find that a diversity of fire characteristics contributes to the spatial heterogeneity (β‐diversity) of plant and pollinator communities. Lastly, we find evidence that fire diversity buffers pollinator communities against the effects of drought‐induced floral resource scarcity. Fire diversity is thus important for the maintenance of flowering plant and pollinator diversity and predicted shifts in fire regimes to include less pyrodiversity compounded with increasing drought occurrence will negatively influence the richness of these communities in this and other forested ecosystems. In addition, lower heterogeneity of fire severity may act to reduce spatial turnover of plant–pollinator communities. The heterogeneity of community composition is a primary determinant of the total species diversity present in a landscape, and thus, lower pyrodiversity may negatively affect the richness of plant–pollinator communities across large spatial scales.     

Additive effects of exotic plant abundance and land-use intensity on plant–pollinator interactions

The continuing spread of exotic plants and increasing human land-use are two major drivers of global change threatening ecosystems, species and their interactions. Separate effects of these two drivers on plant–pollinator interactions have been thoroughly studied, but we still lack an understanding of combined and potential interactive effects. In a subtropical South African landscape, we studied 17 plant–pollinator networks along two gradients of relative abundance of exotics and land-use intensity. In general, pollinator visitation rates were lower on exotic plants than on native ones. Surprisingly, while visitation rates on native plants increased with relative abundance of exotics and land-use intensity, pollinator visitation on exotic plants decreased along the same gradients. There was a decrease in the specialization of plants on pollinators and vice versa with both drivers, regardless of plant origin. Decreases in pollinator specialization thereby seemed to be mediated by a species turnover towards habitat generalists. However, contrary to expectations, we detected no interactive effects between the two drivers. Our results suggest that exotic plants and land-use promote generalist plants and pollinators, while negatively affecting specialized plant–pollinator interactions. Weak integration and high specialization of exotic plants may have prevented interactive effects between exotic plants and land-use. Still, the additive effects of exotic plants and land-use on specialized plant–pollinator interactions would have been overlooked in a single-factor study. We therefore highlight the need to consider multiple drivers of global change in ecological research and conservation management.     

Long-term observation of a pollination network: fluctuation in species and interactions, relative invariance of network structure and implications for estimates of specialization

We analysed the dynamics of a plant-pollinator interaction network of a scrub community surveyed over four consecutive years. Species composition within the annual networks showed high temporal variation. Temporal dynamics were also evident in the topology of the network, as interactions among plants and pollinators did not remain constant through time. This change involved both the number and the identity of interacting partners. Strikingly, few species and interactions were consistently present in all four annual plant-pollinator networks (53% of the plant species, 21% of the pollinator species and 4.9% of the interactions). The high turnover in species-to-species interactions was mainly the effect of species turnover (c. 70% in pairwise comparisons among years), and less the effect of species flexibility to interact with new partners (c. 30%). We conclude that specialization in plant-pollinator interactions might be highly overestimated when measured over short periods of time. This is because many plant or pollinator species appear as specialists in 1 year, but tend to be generalists or to interact with different partner species when observed in other years. The high temporal plasticity in species composition and interaction identity coupled with the low variation in network structure properties (e.g. degree centralization, connectance, nestedness, average distance and network diameter) imply (i) that tight and specialized coevolution might not be as important as previously suggested and (ii) that plant-pollinator interaction networks might be less prone to detrimental effects of disturbance than previously thought. We suggest that this may be due to the opportunistic nature of plant and animal species regarding the available partner resources they depend upon at any particular time.     

Effects of different types of low‐intensity management on plant‐pollinator interactions in Estonian grasslands

In the face of global pollinator decline, extensively managed grasslands play an important role in supporting stable pollinator communities. However, different types of extensive management may promote particular plant species and thus particular functional traits. As the functional traits of flowering plant species (e.g., flower size and shape) in a habitat help determine the identity and frequency of pollinator visitors, they can also influence the structures of plant−pollinator interaction networks (i.e., pollination networks). The aim of this study was to examine how the type of low‐intensity traditional management influences plant and pollinator composition, the structure of plant−pollinator interactions, and their mediation by floral and insect functional traits. Specifically, we compared mown wooded meadows to grazed alvar pastures in western Estonia. We found that both management types fostered equal diversity of plants and pollinators, and overlapping, though still distinct, plant and pollinator compositions. Wooded meadow pollination networks had significantly higher connectance and specialization, while alvar pasture networks achieved higher interaction diversity at a standardized sampling of interactions. Pollinators with small body sizes and short proboscis lengths were more specialized in their preference for particular plant species and the specialization of individual pollinators was higher in alvar pastures than in wooded meadows. All in all, the two management types promoted diverse plant and pollinator communities, which enabled the development of equally even and nested pollination networks. The same generalist plant and pollinator species were important for the pollination networks of both wooded meadows and alvar pastures; however, they were complemented by management‐specific species, which accounted for differences in network structure. Therefore, the implementation of both management types in the same landscape helps to maintain high species and interaction diversity.     

Contrasting effects of invasive plants in plant–pollinator networks

The structural organization of mutualism networks, typified by interspecific positive interactions, is important to maintain community diversity. However, there is little information available about the effect of introduced species on the structure of such networks. We compared uninvaded and invaded ecological communities, to examine how two species of invasive plants with large and showy flowers (Carpobrotus affine acinaciformis and Opuntia stricta) affect the structure of Mediterranean plant–pollinator networks. To attribute differences in pollination to the direct presence of the invasive species, areas were surveyed that contained similar native plant species cover, diversity and floral composition, with or without the invaders. Both invasive plant species received significantly more pollinator visits than any native species and invaders interacted strongly with pollinators. Overall, the pollinator community richness was similar in invaded and uninvaded plots, and only a few generalist pollinators visited invasive species exclusively. Invasive plants acted as pollination super generalists. The two species studied were visited by 43% and 31% of the total insect taxa in the community, respectively, suggesting they play a central role in the plant–pollinator networks. Carpobrotus and Opuntia had contrasting effects on pollinator visitation rates to native plants: Carpobrotus facilitated the visit of pollinators to native species, whereas Opuntia competed for pollinators with native species, increasing the nestedness of the plant–pollinator network. These results indicate that the introduction of a new species to a community can have important consequences for the structure of the plant–pollinator network.     

Intraspecific variation in species interactions promotes the feasibility of mutualistic assemblages

Patterns of resource use observed at the species level emerge from the way individuals exploit the range of available resources. Hence, accounting for interindividual differences in resource use, such as pollinator use by plants, is essential to advance our understanding of community assembly and persistence. By using finely resolved data on plant–pollinator interactions, we evaluated how interindividual plant variation in pollinator use scales up to affect community structure and dynamics. All co-occurring plant species comprised specialists interacting with proper subsets of pollinators that visited generalists, and differences in interaction patterns were driven by among-individual trait variation. Furthermore, the nested structure and feasibility of plant–pollinator communities were maximised at higher levels of interindividual plant variation in traits and pollinator use. Our study sheds light on how pervasive properties of community structure arise from individual-level processes and contributes to elucidate the importance of preserving intraspecific variation in traits and resource use within populations.     

Trait matching and phenological overlap increase the spatio‐temporal stability and functionality of plant–pollinator interactions

Morphology and phenology influence plant–pollinator network structure, but whether they generate more stable pairwise interactions with higher pollination success remains unknown. Here we evaluate the importance of morphological trait matching, phenological overlap and specialisation for the spatio‐temporal stability (measured as variability) of plant–pollinator interactions and for pollination success, while controlling for species' abundance. To this end, we combined a 6‐year plant–pollinator interaction dataset, with information on species traits, phenologies, specialisation, abundance and pollination success, into structural equation models. Interactions among abundant plants and pollinators with well‐matched traits and phenologies formed the stable and functional backbone of the pollination network, whereas poorly matched interactions were variable in time and had lower pollination success. We conclude that phenological overlap could be more useful for predicting changes in species interactions than species abundances, and that non‐random extinction of species with well‐matched traits could decrease the stability of interactions within communities and reduce their functioning.     

Plant–pollinator network assembly along the chronosequence of a glacier foreland

Forelands of retreating glaciers offer an ideal model system to study community assembly processes during primary succession. As plants colonize the area that is freed from ice they should be accompanied by their pollinators to successfully reproduce and spread. However, little is known about the assembly of plant–pollinator networks. We therefore used quantitative network analysis to study the structure of plant–pollinator interactions at seven sites representing a chronosequence from 8 to 130 years since deglaciation on the foreland of the Morteratsch glacier (southeastern Switzerland). At these sites, individual visits of plant flowers by insects were recorded throughout the flowering season. Species richness of insect‐pollinated plants and plant‐pollinating insects, together with measures of interaction diversity and evenness, increased along the chronosequence at least for the first 80 years after deglaciation. Bees were the most frequent flower visitors at the two youngest sites, whereas flies dominated in mature communities. Pollinator generalization (the number of visited plant species weighted by interaction strength), but not plant generalization, strongly increased during the primary succession. This was reflected in a pronounced decline in network level specialization (measured as Blüthgen's H₂’) and interaction strength asymmetry during the first 60 years along the chronosequence, while nestedness increased along the chronosequence. Thus, our findings contradict niche‐theoretical predictions of increasing specialization of pollination systems during succession, but are in agreement with expectations from optimal foraging theory, predicting an increase in pollinator generalization with higher plant diversity but similar flower abundance, and an increase in diet breadth at higher pollinator densities during primary succession.     

Individual flowering phenology shapes plant–pollinator interactions across ecological scales affecting plant reproduction

The balance of pollination competition and facilitation among co-flowering plants and abiotic resource availability can modify plant species and individual reproduction. Floral resource succession and spatial heterogeneity modulate plant–pollinator interactions across ecological scales (individual plant, local assemblage, and interaction network of agroecological infrastructure across the farm). Intraspecific variation in flowering phenology can modulate the precise level of spatio-temporal heterogeneity in floral resources, pollen donor density, and pollinator interactions that a plant individual is exposed to, thereby affecting reproduction. We tested how abiotic resources and multi-scale plant–pollinator interactions affected individual plant seed set modulated by intraspecific variation in flowering phenology and spatio-temporal floral heterogeneity arising from agroecological infrastructure. We transplanted two focal insect-pollinated plant species (Cyanus segetum and Centaurea jacea, n = 288) into agroecological infrastructure (10 sown wildflower and six legume–grass strips) across a farm-scale experiment (125 ha). We applied an individual-based phenologically explicit approach to match precisely the flowering period of plant individuals to the concomitant level of spatio-temporal heterogeneity in plant–pollinator interactions, potential pollen donors, floral resources, and abiotic conditions (temperature, water, and nitrogen). Individual plant attractiveness, assemblage floral density, and conspecific pollen donor density (C. jacea) improved seed set. Network linkage density increased focal species seed set and modified the effect of local assemblage richness and abundance on C. segetum. Mutual dependence on pollinators in networks increased C. segetum seed set, while C. jacea seed set was greatest where both specialization on pollinators and mutual dependence was high. Abiotic conditions were of little or no importance to seed set. Intra- and interspecific plant–pollinator interactions respond to spatio-temporal heterogeneity arising from agroecological management affecting wild plant species reproduction. The interplay of pollinator interactions within and between ecological scales affecting seed set implies a co-occurrence of pollinator-mediated facilitative and competitive interactions among plant species and individuals.     

Quantitative predictions of pollinators’ abundances from qualitative data on their interactions with plants and evidences of emergent neutrality

Making quantitative predictions of the effects of human activities on ecological communities is crucial for their management. In the case of plant–pollinator mutualistic networks, despite the great progress in describing the interactions between plants and their pollinators, the capability of making quantitative predictions is still lacking. Here, in order to estimate pollinator species abundances and their niche distribution, I propose a general method to transform a plant–pollinator network into a competition model between pollinator species. Competition matrices were obtained from ‘first principles’ calculations, using qualitative interaction matrices compiled for a set of 38 plant–pollinator networks. This method is able to make accurate quantitative predictions for mutualistic networks spanning a broad geographic range. Specifically, the predicted biodiversity metrics for pollinators – species relative abundances, Shannon equitability and Gini–Simpson indices – agree quite well with those inferred from empirical counts of visits of pollinators to plants. Furthermore, this method allows building a one‐dimensional niche axis for pollinators in which clusters of generalists are separated by specialists thus rendering support to the theory of emergent neutrality. The importance of interspecific competition between pollinator species is a controversial and unresolved issue, considerable circumstantial evidence has accrued that competition between insects does occur, but a clear measure of its impact on their species abundances is still lacking. I contributed to fill this gap by quantifying the effect of competition between pollinators. Particular applications of our analysis could be to estimate the quantitative effects of removing a species from a community or to address the fate of populations of native organisms when foreign species are introduced to ecosystems far beyond their home range.     

The topological differences between visitation and pollen transport networks: a comparison in species rich communities of the Himalaya–Hengduan Mountains

Pollination networks are usually constructed and assessed by direct field observations which commonly assume that all flower visitors are true pollinators. However, this assumption is often invalid and the use of data based on mere visitors to flowers may lead to a misunderstanding of intrinsic pollination networks. Here, using a large dataset by both sampling floral visitors and analyzing their pollen loads, we constructed 32 networks pairs (visitation versus pollen transport) across one flowering season at four elevation sites in the Himalaya–Hengduan Mountains region. Pollen analysis was conducted to determine which flower visitors acted as potential pollinators (pollen vectors) or as cheaters (those not carrying pollen of the visited plants). We tested whether there were topological differences between visitation and pollen transport networks and whether different taxonomic groups of insect visitors differed in their ability to carry pollen of the visited plants. Our results indicated that there was a significantly higher degree of specialization at both the network and species levels in the pollen transport networks in contrast to the visitation networks. Modularity was lower but nestedness was higher in the visitation networks compared to the pollen transport networks. All the cheaters were identified as peripheral species and most of them contributed positively to the nested structure. This may explain in part the differences in modularity and nestedness between the two network types. Bees carried the highest proportion of pollen of the visited plants. This was followed by Coleoptera, other Hymenoptera and Diptera. Lepidoptera carried the lowest proportion of pollen of the visited plants. Our study shows that the construction of pollen transport networks could provide a more in‐depth understanding of plant–pollinator interactions. Moreover, it suggests that detecting and removing cheater interactions when studying the topology of other mutualistic networks might be also important.     

Experimental reduction of pollinator visitation modifies plant–plant interactions for pollination

The strength of interactions between plants for pollination depends on the abundance of plants and pollinators in the community. The abundance of pollinators may influence plant associations and densities at which individual fitness is maximized. Reduced pollinator visitation may therefore affect the way plant species interact for pollination. We experimentally reduced pollinator visitation to six pollinator‐dependent species (three from an alpine and three from a lowland community in Norway) to study how interactions for pollination were modified by reduced pollinator availability. We related flower visitation, pollen limitation and seed set to density of conspecifics and pollinator‐sharing heterospecifics inside 30 dome‐shaped cages partially covered with fishnet (experimental plots) and in 30 control plots. We expected to find stronger interactions between plants in experimental compared to controls plots. The experiment modified plant–plant interactions for pollination in all the six species; although for two of them neighbourhood interactions did not affect seed set. The pollen limitation and seed set data showed that reduction of pollinator visits most frequently resulted in novel and/or stronger interactions between plants in the experimental plots that did not occur in the controls. Although the responses were species‐specific, there was a tendency for increasing facilitative interactions with conspecific neighbours in experimental plots where pollinator availability was reduced. Heterospecifics only influenced pollination and fecundity in species from the alpine community and in the experimental plots, where they competed with the focal species for pollination. The patterns observed for visitation rates differed from those for fecundity, with more significant interactions between plants in the controls in both communities. This study warns against the exclusive use of visitation data to interpret plant–plant interactions for pollination, and helps to understand how plant aggregations may buffer or intensify the effects of a pollinator loss on plant fitness.     

Diversity and Distribution of Floral Resources Influence the Restoration of Plant–Pollinator Networks on a Reclaimed Strip Mine

Plant–pollinator mutualisms are one of the several functional relationships that must be reinstated to ensure the long‐term success of habitat restoration projects. These mutualisms are unlikely to reinstate themselves until all of the resource requirements of pollinators have been met. By meeting these requirements, projects can improve their long‐term success. We hypothesized that pollinator assemblage and structure and stability of plant–pollinator networks depend both on aspects of the surrounding landscape and of the restoration effort itself. We predicted that pollinator species diversity and network stability would be negatively associated with distance from remnant habitat, but that local floral diversity might rescue pollinator diversity and network stability in locations distant from the remnant. We created plots of native prairie on a reclaimed strip mine in central Ohio, U.S.A. that ranged in floral diversity and isolation from the remnant habitat. We found that the pollinator diversity declined with distance from the remnant habitat. Furthermore, reduced pollinator diversity in low floral diversity plots far from the remnant habitat was associated with loss of network stability. High floral diversity, however, compensated for losses in pollinator diversity in plots far from the remnant habitat through the attraction of generalist pollinators. Generalist pollinators increased network connectance and plant‐niche overlap. As a result, network robustness of high floral diversity plots was independent of isolation. We conclude that the aspects of the restoration effort itself, such as floral community composition, can be successfully tailored to incorporate the restoration of pollinators and improve success given a particular landscape context.