Female fecundity advantage in gynodioecious plants is required for the spread and maintenance of this reproductive system. However, not all reproductive characters show female advantage in all species. We used a meta-analysis to summarise differences between females and hermaphrodites reported from the literature for several reproductive traits. Further we tested three hypotheses, (1) that female plants of species with many ovules produce more seeds per fruit while those with few ovules produce heavier seeds, (2) that females are more pollen limited than hermaphrodites, and (3) that floral sexual size dimorphism is more pronounced in species with few ovules, either because female reproductive success is less limited by pollen availability in such species or because flowers with few ovules require a smaller floral structure to protect the carpels. Overall, females compared to hermaphrodites produced more but smaller flowers, had higher fruit set, higher total seed production, and produced heavier seeds that germinated better. Species with many versus few ovules differed in female advantage for flower size dimorphism, flower number, fruit set and total seed production. However seed size, seed set per fruit and seed germination differences between females and hermaphrodites did not differ significantly between species with few and many ovules. We also found no evidence for differential pollen limitation between females and hermaphrodites. Degree of floral sexual size dimorphism differed significantly between species with few and many ovules. Though pistillate flowers were generally smaller than those of hermaphrodites, species with many ovules showed less difference in flower size between the sexes, suggesting either that the protective role of the perianth constrains the evolution of sexual size dimorphism in species with many ovules or that selection for adequate pollination in species with many ovules impedes the reduction in flower size of females.

Summary1. Plant-pollinator interactions are crucial for the reproduction of most angiosperms. When faced with perturbations, plant-pollinator networks might be robust mainly due to the presence of highly generalist species. Perturbations can, in turn, affect how pollinators exploit their food sources and therefore their degree of generalization. 2. In particular, generalization of pollinators might vary with forager density. At high densities floral resources available in plant communities would be more rapidly depleted than at low densities. According to optimal foraging theory (OFT), this decrease in resources should lead to an increase in diet breadth. 3. We investigated the impact of pollinator density on diet breadth of Bombus terrestris . We recorded the individual foraging behaviour of bumblebees from eight colonies. They foraged in presence of either one or several conspecifics on experimental plant communities composed of five plant species. Diet breadth was calculated as the number of plant species visited, as well as by the Levins index. We analyzed the effect of forager density on diet breadth at both the individual and the colony levels. 4. We found that forager density affected degree of generalization at individual and colony levels. A more competitive environment increased individual generalization, as predicted by OFT, and decreased the variability in generalization across colonies. Moreover, we found that bumblebee size was positively related to the amplitude of diet breadth change. 5. Synthesis . Our study sheds light on an additional level of complexity of plant-pollinator systems, showing that pollinator diet breadth is a flexible trait which results from behavioural adaptation to resource availability. More generally, changes in foraging insects' diet via competition for resources are likely to ensue from anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and to impact upon the functioning of plant-pollinator networks.