Fig. 1: Hypothesized drivers of virus transmission via plant–pollinator interactions and landscape effects.
Virus transmission in plant–pollinator communities is hypothesized to be influenced by various mechanisms operating at the species, community and landscape levels. At the species and network level, we hypothesize that specific foraging traits such as (1) a high floral resource overlap of pollinators with other species, in particular honeybees (which are expected to act as a reservoir host9), (2) a high diet specialization and (3) a low centrality in the network19, as well as flower morphology of the visited plants such as (4) open dish (dish-bowl-shaped) flowers22,24 will lead to an increased viral prevalence and load in wild pollinators. At the landscape level, (5) a high abundance of honeybees and/or high viral loads or prevalence in honeybees and high abundance of wild pollinators or a low pollinator diversity as well as (6) a low amount of pollinator-friendly habitat and (7) flower diversity are predicted to increase viral prevalence and load in wild pollinators28,29, for example, (8) through increasing the floral resource overlap among pollinators, in particular between honeybees and wild pollinators30. Figure created using Procreate (https://procreate.com/).
