Most birds fly, but throughout history there have been the occasional species that don’t.Ĭlimate The weather conditions that typically exist in one area, in general, or over a long period.Ĭlimate change Long-term, significant change in the climate of Earth. Birds are jacketed in feathers and produce young from the eggs they deposit in some sort of nest. A scientist who works in this field is a biogeochemist.īirds Warm-blooded animals with wings that first showed up during the time of the dinosaurs. Examples include the Hawaiian islands, the Aleutian islands and the more than 300 islands in the Republic of Fiji.Īverage (in science) A term for the arithmetic mean, which is the sum of a group of numbers that is then divided by the size of the group.īiogeochemistry A term that covers processes that cycle (or eventually deposit) pure elements or chemical compounds (including minerals) between living species and nonliving parts (such as rock or soil or water) within an ecosystem. Like green plants, they depend on sunlight to make their food.Īrchipelago A group of islands, many times forming in an arc across a broad expanse of the oceans. As aquatic organisms, they grow in water. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water, it triggers chemical reactions that create carbonic acid.Īlgae Single-celled organisms, once considered plants (they aren’t). Protecting seabirds to save coral reefs is one solution that doesn’t stink.Īcidification A process that lowers the pH of a solution. “We’re constantly looking for solutions for the coral reef crisis,” Graham says. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre estimates that large coral reefs could be gone by the end of this century. Climate change has been driving both impacts. These include coral bleaching and ocean acidification. Still, many reefs have been in trouble for decades and face other threats, too. So far, the success rate has been about 85 percent. It can be difficult to get rid of every rat on an island. Rat extermination has been done on 580 islands worldwide. Between 15 and 50 percent of nitrogen found in corals comes directly from seabird guano, he says.Įradicating invasive species, such as rats, from the islands will help preserve reefs, Graham says. He’s a biogeochemist at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. In addition to these indirect effects on reefs, nitrogen may also directly help the corals, says David Gillikin, who was not involved in the study. The fish living near reefs with more nitrogen also grew larger and faster, the scientists show. These are all essential processes in a healthy reef. Those fish also help clear out dead corals. That leads to more fish grazing on the reefs. When they’re gone, the environment on land and in the water changes dramatically.Įxplainer: The fertilizing power of N and P (fertilizer)īecause nitrogen can act as a fertilizer for ocean plants and algae, the researchers now suspect this boosts the health of reefs around rat-free islands. Why? Seabirds are “ecosystem engineers.” They help to keep the ecosystem in balance. Rats are a major problem, says Jones, who works at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. She’s a restoration ecologist who was not involved in the study. Rats eat seabird eggs, chicks - even the brains of adult birds, says Holly Jones. These birds have included red-footed boobies and terns. Since then, these rodents have taken over ecosystems, devastating populations of native seabirds. People introduced rats to the Chagos Archipelago in the late 1700s. The scientists described their findings in the July 12 Nature. Rain washes the poop’s nitrogen into the ocean. Feces are naturally rich in nitrogen, a key nutrient. An ecologist, Graham works at Lancaster University in England. Rats affect the seabirds, which affect the reefs, notes this coauthor of the new study. “We’re essentially linking three ecosystems in this study,” explains Nick Graham.
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