Research · Birds Are Among Earth's Most Important Nutrient Movers, a 400-Paper Review Finds

Research · Birds Are Among Earth's Most Important Nutrient Movers, a 400-Paper Review Finds

Birds are among the planet's most powerful — and most overlooked — transport systems for nutrients, according to a review of nearly 400 scientific papers published on October 19 in Current Biology by researchers from Cornell University and five other institutions. By eating, flying and depositing waste across oceans, mountains and continents, birds move nitrogen and phosphorus between land, lakes and sea at a global scale: their food consumption rates run about 30% higher than those of similarly sized mammals, and seabird colonies in particular create concentrated "islands of fertility" whose nutrients wash into coastal waters and act as lifelines for coral reefs and reef-fish communities — where seabird colonies disappear, reef productivity and resilience decline measurably. The team also showed that seasonal diet shifts change the chemistry of what birds release (insect-rich spring diets yield nitrogen-rich waste; autumn fruit and seed diets yield carbon-rich waste), a finding that can help predict the ecological knock-on effects of bird decline — a pressing question, with 45% of global migratory bird species now in decline. The researchers note the process can also be harnessed: in one study, simply installing seabird perches inside seagrass restoration sites attracted birds whose phosphorus deposits helped the seagrass recover.

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