Limited reproductive interference despite high rates of heterospecific pollen transfer among co-occurring bat-pollinated Burmeistera.

Premise: Many tropical plants are bat-pollinated, but these mammals often carry copious, multispecific pollen loads making bat-pollinated plants susceptible to heterospecific pollen deposition and reproductive interference. We investigated pollen transfer between sympatric bat-pollinated Burmeistera species and their response to heterospecific pollen deposition from each other.

Methods: We quantified conspecific and heterospecific pollen deposition for two populations of B.