Sexual reproduction often declines towards range edges, reducing fitness, dispersal, and adaptive potential at range edges. For plants, sexual reproduction is frequently limited by inadequate pollination. While case studies show that pollen limitation can limit plant distributions, the extent to which pollination commonly declines toward plant range edges is unknown. Here, we leverage global databases of pollen-supplementation experiments and plant occurrence data to test whether pollen limitation increases toward plant range edges, using a phylogenetically controlled meta-analysis. While there was significant pollen limitation across studies, we found little evidence that pollen limitation increases toward plant range edges. Pollen limitation was not stronger toward the tropics, nor at species’ equatorward vs poleward range limits. Meta-analysis results are consistent with results from targeted experiments, in which pollen limitation increased significantly toward only 14% of 14 plant range edges, suggesting that pollination contributes to range limits less often than do other interactions. Together, these results suggest pollination is one of the rich variety of potential ecological factors that can contribute to range limits, rather than a generally important constraint on plant distributions.

Here, we present all of the R scripts used in the processing and analysis of data for "Does pollen limitation limit plant ranges? Evidence and implications." We also provide a list of species for which GBIF occurrence data was originally downloaded, the list of species deemed to have sufficient GBIF coverage upon initial review, and a final list of species with occurrence cleaning instructions. In data, NA values indicate data not available. The readme file contains information on the R scripts and a description of the variables in each species list. All details of how to derive our final dataset are provided in the processing and analysis scripts. Information on data cleaning protocols and analysis methods can be found in the associated manuscript referenced above. GloPL and GBIF data (which are used in our data generation and analysis) should be downloaded directly from those data repositories.