Seabirds supply nitrogen to reef-building corals on remote Pacific islets

Seabirds concentrate nutrients from large marine areas on their nesting islands playing an important ecological role in nutrient transfer between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Here we investigate the role of guano on corals reefs across scales by analyzing the stable nitrogen isotopic (δ15N) values of the scleractinian coral Pocillopora damicornis on fringing reefs around two Pacific remote islets with large seabird colonies. Marine stations closest to the seabird colonies had higher nitrate + nitrite concentrations compared to more distant stations. Coral and zooxanthellae δ15N values were also higher at these sites, suggesting that guano-derived nitrogen is assimilated into corals and contributes to their nitrogen requirements. The spatial extent of guano influence was however restricted to a local scale. Our results demonstrate that seabird-derived nutrients not only spread across the terrestrial ecosystem, but also affect components of the adjacent marine ecosystem. Further studies are now needed to assess if this nutrient input has a positive or negative effect for corals. Such studies on remote islets also open fresh perspectives to understand how nutrients affect coral reefs isolated from other anthropogenic stressors.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Scientific Reports

• Publication date

  2017-06-16

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41598-017-03781-yPMID 28623288PMCID 5473863
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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