Incorporating pollinator movement into connectivity models predicts pollen-mediated gene flow and highlights the importance of regenerating forests in tropical landscapes.

Context: Pollen-mediated gene flow is crucial for ecological and evolutionary processes and understanding its disruption by anthropogenic disturbances is essential for conservation. Objectives: In this study, we developed landscape connectivity metrics that incorporated hummingbird movement behaviour to assess how structural (amount and configuration) and functional (species-specific behavioural response) landscape connectivity influence pollen-mediated gene flow in a tropical plant species. Methods: We adapted the incidence function model (IFM) to develop a set of functional landscape connectivity metrics that integrated field estimates of pollinator movement behaviour. We evaluated whether these metrics outperform structural landscape connectivity metrics for explaining contemporary pollen-mediated gene flow. Results: The performance of landscape connectivity metrics as predictors of contemporary pollen-mediated gene flow is scale dependent. At the focal patch scale, pollen-mediated gene flow was better predicted by structural connectivity metrics, specifically the area of contiguous mature forest. At the local landscape scale, pollen-mediated gene flow was better predicted by functional connectivity metrics that accounted for hummingbird movement, including gap-crossing probabilities. We found that including regenerating forests and narrow forest elements better explained pollen-mediated gene flow than a focus solely on mature forest. Conclusions: By integrating hummingbird movement behaviour, we offer a more realistic and nuanced understanding of how landscapes influence pollen-mediated gene flow. We underscore the importance of accounting for pollinator movement behaviour in conservation strategies that aim to preserve pollen-mediated gene flow, and demonstrate that forest regeneration is critical for maintaining functional landscape connectivity in tropical fragmented landscapes. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-026-02309-y.