A study recently published in the journal of Functional Ecology shows us how large fruit-eating animals can be responsible for massively enhancing forest nutrientA substance that contains the raw materials for life. At a chemical level, these are contained inside compounds that are absorbed into the body and essential energy-containing molecules are extracted, so that energy can be transformed into other chemical processes that use the energy for living. More processes.
You will often hear me repeat the terms transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More, amplificationAmplification (of nutrients and energy). Animals consume plants and other animals and in doing so, reintroduce important energy-containing nutrients back into the environment, at even higher concentrations and in patches. Amplification of energy is driven by migration and happens at every scale, from insects moving daily in and out of your vegetable patch, to African wildebeest herds and the seasonal More and concentration of nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More, when I’m discussing animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More. It’s rare to find research that so elegantly and concisely demonstrates the function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More of wildlife in these processes. The combination underpins Earth’s entire climate and food security and it is driven wholly by animals.
The scientists’ work focused on native forest pigs (though the principle relates to any large fruit-eating animal, anywhere on Earth, including the Tapirs that also frequented the study areas). Without these larger animals, ammonium would be 95% less available (concentration). Ammonium converts to nitrate, which is a basic nutrient for plant growth and the rate of nitrate turnover is also far lower (amplification).
Critically, the study also found they were moving nutrients into places that would otherwise have been quite nutrient-poor (transfer) and without them, the forest’s ecology could not be sustainable.
“… available Nitrogen losses from denitrification by anaerobic bacteria or immobilization during the incubation period were largely outweighed by the performance of nitrifying bacteria but only on plots where large herbivores have access”.
These findings are important for a number of reasons.
Wild animals help stabilise the amount of nitrogen (via ammonium and nitrate) in the system. The fertiliser technology we use on farms is the very thing that has killed soil organic structure, so it cannot be used to remedy the situation. Organic farming is the only future-proofed solution but as this recent study shows, without animals, it cannot function.
Translating the knowledge that wildlife is critical for the past and future stability of soil integrity should help farmers. Arguably, if forest fruit grazers can wander onto farmland and spread their effect into the margins food-production, it could be of profoundly important socio-economic benefit. It links together wildlife conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More, habitat protection and agriculture / food security.
The only thing I would caution, is that our interpretation of the study’s results can be biased, if we’re looking at a modified system. In pristine landscapes such as primary tropical forest, there is often little measurable excess nutrient (because the turnover is big and rapid). So much global biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More was lost years ago, that our study sites tend to be degraded, so will tend towards being able to detect large amounts of excess nutrient. This is fine, it doesn’t alter the results in terms of understanding animal impact, but the “more fertiliser equals more vegetation” idea is exactly what got us into the mess we’re in, with declining global soil health.
Moving towards a system that is healthier, will be measured not by the amount of nutrient but by the biomassThe weight of living organisms. Biomass can be measured in relation to the amount of carbon, the dry weight (with all moisture removed) or living weight. In general it can be used to describe the volume of energy that is contained inside systems, as the size of animals relates to their metabolism and therefore, how much energy they contain and More and diversity of plants and animals, which equals increased carbon uptake–this is why food security, climate and animal conservation, are inextricably linked.
The animals’ role meanwhile, is in the transfer, amplification and concentration of nutrients. Animals, like the species in this study, evolved into a fine-scale way of positioning nutrients at the right concentrations, in the right places, at the right times, that enabled tropical rainforests to become among the most species richThe number of species within a given area. Note, this is often confused with biodiversity but is very different. Species richness is not equal in all areas. Desert species richness is lower but the scale and intensity of species function can still be significant as biodiversity is not about number of species, it's about ecosystem processes. More on Earth. Over millions of years, this maximised the amount of free surplus energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More (via nutrients) the system could absorb, until every last drop was used up and all animals were able to make a living.
That is the world we were born into and the one that supplied the soil for our food supply. It’s the world we need to survive in the future and it all depends on rebuilding wildlife populations.
