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Nutrient pump

Causation & process

The repeated movement of nutrients between ecosystems or landscape compartments through the movements and life cycles of organisms, particularly where those movements transport nutrients across ecosystem boundaries or against prevailing physical flows. Migratory animals can function as nutrient pumps by acquiring nutrients in one ecosystem and releasing them in another through excretion, reproduction, mortality, predation, or decomposition. Pacific salmon provide a well-studied example by transporting marine-derived nutrients into freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems during spawning migrations. Nutrient pumping is a specific mechanism of biologically mediated nutrient transfer and illustrates how mobile organisms can connect otherwise spatially separated ecological processes.

Gende, S. M., Edwards, R. T., Willson, M. F., & Wipfli, M. S. (2002). Pacific salmon in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. BioScience, 52(10), 917–928. Schindler, D. E., Scheuerell, M. D., Moore, J. W., Gende, S. M., Francis, T. B., & Palen, W. J. (2003). Pacific salmon and the ecology of coastal ecosystems. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 1(1), 31–37. Vanni, M. J. (2002). Nutrient cycling by animals in freshwater ecosystems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 33, 341–370.