New Zealand Journal of Zoology abstracts
Biopedturbation by an island ecosystem engineer:
burrowing
volumes and litter deposition by sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus)
Sam McKechnie
Zoology Department
University
of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin
9054, New Zealand
mckechniesam@yahoo.com
Abstract Seabirds can influence
entire
island
ecosystems through the effects of their burrowing and of their
underground
deposition of vegetation on biotic and abiotic island processes. This
study
quantifies the extent of these effects at three sooty shearwater
breeding
islands in southern New Zealand,
with the aim of assessing the importance of this species as an
ecosystem
engineer. Mean burrow volumes ranged between 158.2 and 528.1 m3 ha–1.
Between 18 and 34% of the ground surface was undermined by burrow space
on the
three islands. This extent of burrowing is comparable to that of
fossorial
mammals, widely recognised as ecosystem engineers. Mean vegetation
inputs (dry
weight), transported underground by birds and incorporated into nests,
varied
between 33 and 96 g m–2. The implications of the
biopedturbation
caused by sooty shearwater burrowing to the extent measured in this
study may
be profound for some ecosystem processes, and certainly warrants
further
research.
Keywords sooty shearwater; Puffinus
griseus;
burrowing; biopedturbation; ecosystem engineer
New Zealand
Journal of Zoology, 2006, Vol. 33: 259–265
0301–4223/06/3304–0259 © The Royal Society
of New Zealand
2006
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