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Nutrient transfer
Causation & process
The movement of nutrients between locations, habitats, or ecosystem compartments through physical or biological processes. Organisms can mediate nutrient transfer by consuming resources in one location and depositing nutrients in another through excretion, egestion, decomposition, prey remains, or movement of biomass, thereby connecting spatially separated ecosystems such as aquatic and terrestrial environments.
Polis, G. A., Anderson, W. B., & Holt, R. D. (1997). Toward an integration of landscape and food web ecology: The dynamics of spatially subsidized food webs. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 28, 289–316. Vanni, M. J. (2002). Nutrient cycling by animals in freshwater ecosystems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 33, 341–370.
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