(and that is highly relatable content)

Thanks for posting about our work! Here’s a thread about it if anyone wants to know more with a link to a version that’s not behind a paywall.

bsky.app/profile/doch...

Here’s my thread about this paper if folks want to know more: bsky.app/profile/doch...

Here's Island Conservation's press release: www.islandconservation.org/circular-sea...

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Yay!! My pleasure.

Thanks :)

Here's a link to NIU's press release and more will follow :)

newsroom.niu.edu/niu-led-glob...

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It was one of the most efficient and rewarding co-writing experiences I’ve been a part of, in no small part because the team was full of a bunch of amazing folks from different experiences and career stages!

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My talk was about what we know and don’t know about the circular seabird economy. An editor for NRB saw it and invited me to write a paper on what I presented. We brought together a team of experts from @nature.org, Island Conservation, @birdlifeglobal.bsky.social, and 5+ universities.

The backstory for how this came about is also kind of fun. It all started when @nickajgraham.bsky.social invited me to give the keynote talk last year in the thematic session on ecological flows and fluxes across the land-sea interface at #BES2024. @britishecologicalsociety.org

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Our paper summarizes everything we know about this process and also talks about what we don’t know. If you’re a post-grad/graduate student or an aspiring one, check it out for things it would be great for us to have a better handle on.

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Given how many human livelihoods are tied to islands and oceans, protecting seabirds can protect those livelihoods.

Essentially, seabird population health is inextricably tied with the health and livelihood of people, especially fishers and island-dwellers.

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At the same time, around a third of seabird species are threatened with extinction, so their influence on land and sea is also at threat. Protecting them isn’t just about protecting a single species - it’s about protecting and conserving their outsized impacts on islands and oceans.

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In this way, the circular seabird economy fuels both terrestrial and marine food webs!

Evidence shows that the influence seabirds have in both ecosystems makes them significant connectors of land and sea.
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This thread would be too long to list the numerous impacts, but a few of them have implications for increasing climate resilience: Macroalgae diversity is higher, fish biomass is higher, fish grow bigger, and coral reefs recover quicker after bleacing events around seabird breeding islands.
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But the transfer of nutrients doesn’t end there. The nutrients wash back into the surrounding ocean, or may get into the air as ammonia, and eventually land back in the ocean, where some of the same organisms seabirds eat take the nutrients back up, and the circle continues.
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f you’ve never heard of the Circular Seabird Economy, it’s the idea that seabirds feed on marine prey, and at their colonial nesting sites, primarily on islands, they deposit significant amounts of those nutrients (mostly in the form of guano) onto land.

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