Legacies of foundation species shape life after death
Kai L. Kopecky, Max C. N. Castorani, Ty Tuff, Audrey Barker Plotkin, David M. Bell, Jill F. Johnstone, John S. Kominoski, Jesse B. Nippert, Christopher J. Nytch, Steven C. Pennings, Daniel C. Reed, Aaron B. Shiels, Katharine N. Suding · 2026
Read Legacies of foundation species shape life after death by Kai L. Kopecky, Max C. N. Castorani, Ty Tuff, Audrey Barker Plotkin, David M. Bell, Jill F. Johnstone, John S. Kominoski, Jesse B. Nippert, Christopher J. Nytch, Steven C. Pennings, Daniel C. Reed, Aaron B. Shiels, Katharine N. Suding (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13251825.txt.
Description
Kai Kopecky and a large team study how dead giants shape living ecosystems in this 2026 paper. Foundation species such as trees, grasses, corals, and oysters build whole habitats, and their remains keep working long after death.
The team drew on experiments and records from ten sites across the United States research network. Five sites were on land and five were marine, and the records spanned two to 32 years. The dead routinely changed the life rates of their living kin. Effects ran from halving growth to a twelve-fold rise. The authors call this material legacy a hidden layer of ecosystem memory. They see it as a practical tool as climate-driven die-offs grow.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Kai L. Kopecky, Max C. N. Castorani, Ty Tuff, Audrey Barker Plotkin, David M. Bell, Jill F. Johnstone, John S. Kominoski, Jesse B. Nippert, Christopher J. Nytch, Steven C. Pennings, Daniel C. Reed, Aaron B. Shiels, Katharine N. Suding |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 33564 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |