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      Migratory animals couple biodiversity and ecosystem functioning worldwide.

      1 ,
      Science (New York, N.Y.)
      American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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          Abstract

          Animal migrations span the globe, involving immense numbers of individuals from a wide range of taxa. Migrants transport nutrients, energy, and other organisms as they forage and are preyed upon throughout their journeys. These highly predictable, pulsed movements across large spatial scales render migration a potentially powerful yet underappreciated dimension of biodiversity that is intimately embedded within resident communities. We review examples from across the animal kingdom to distill fundamental processes by which migratory animals influence communities and ecosystems, demonstrating that they can uniquely alter energy flow, food-web topology and stability, trophic cascades, and the structure of metacommunities. Given the potential for migration to alter ecological networks worldwide, we suggest an integrative framework through which community dynamics and ecosystem functioning may explicitly consider animal migrations.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Science
          Science (New York, N.Y.)
          American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
          1095-9203
          0036-8075
          Apr 04 2014
          : 344
          : 6179
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Department of Bird Migration, Swiss Ornithological Institute, 6204 Sempach, Switzerland.
          Article
          344/6179/1242552
          10.1126/science.1242552
          24700862
          bdab266f-3dc1-443c-9ba2-13c2823f02b8
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