STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Right. I know it's early in the morning, but we're going to begin this next story with a sort of analogy. The foundation of a house supports the rest of the structure. That's easy to understand. Turns out the same is true for what ecologists call foundation species like undersea coral. They support and shape entire ecosystems. NPR's Nate Rott learned that foundation species help out even after they die.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: When Kai Kopecky was working on his PhD, his fieldwork involved a lot of diving off the island of Moorea in the South Pacific over a coral reef.
KAI KOPECKY: The first time I went, it was, like, the most stunning reef I'd ever seen. Like, just every square inch of the reef was just covered in living coral.
ROTT: Unfortunately, the next time he went was after a coral-bleaching event.
KOPECKY: Caused by a marine heat wave. And so a lot of that coral died.
ROTT: Kopecky, a marine biologist, was curious how the skeletal remains were influencing the reef's ability to recover compared to, say, a tropical cyclone, where the coral gets scraped off the seafloor, leaving a flat surface.
KOPECKY: And we found a lot of evidence that the dead skeletons actually hamper recovery.
ROTT: By providing nooks and crannies for seaweed and other species that compete with coral.
KOPECKY: I was like, OK. Wow. The structure itself - just the dead foundation species - can put the ecosystem on a completely different trajectory.
ROTT: Foundation species are found from the bottom of oceans to the tops of mountains. They're typically the most abundant plant or animal in an ecosystem - trees, grasses, oysters or kelp that create microclimates, nutrients, habitat.
KOPECKY: Providing the infrastructure on which ecosystems are built on.
ROTT: Kopecky was curious about the postdeath legacy of other foundation species. Did they help a system recover? Or like the coral, did they hamper it? So he recruited researchers across North America.
KOPECKY: You know, people who work in, like, tropical montane forests of Puerto Rico and, like, tall grass prairies of Kansas.
ROTT: John Kominoski, an ecosystem ecologist at Florida International University, was brought in for his knowledge of mangroves and how they respond to disturbances like hurricanes.
JOHN KOMINOSKI: We know that when storms hit mangroves, they defoliate the forest, and you get all this dump of organic matter from the canopy onto the forest floor.
ROTT: Nutrients that the remaining live mangroves can recycle and use to expand the roots.
KOMINOSKI: Which allows the whole forest to recover from the disturbance event.
ROTT: In total, the new study published in the journal Science Advances looked at 10 ecosystems and found that the dead had a strong influence on the living in nine of them. To Kopecky, the findings suggest that death is not an end.
KOPECKY: Just 'cause an organism dies doesn't mean it isn't continuing to have an influence.
ROTT: They often leave a legacy, he says - sometimes positive, sometimes not.
Nate Rott, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANS DANS' "AU HASARD") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
