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Seabirds concentrate nutrients from large marine areas on their nesting islands. The high nutrient load may cause runoff into surrounding waters and affect marine communities in similar ways to those reported from marine fertilization experiments. In order to test if cormorant colonies affect algae and invertebrates in surrounding coastal waters, we collected Fucus vesiculosus fronds, its epiphytic algae, and associated invertebrate fauna near abandoned and active cormorant nesting islands as well as reference islands without nesting cormorants in the Stockholm archipelago in the northern Baltic Sea, Sweden. First, we showed, with δ 15 N analyses, that ornithogenic nitrogen provided a significant nitrogen source for algae and invertebrate consumers near islands with high nest density. Second, the nitrogen and phosphorus content of algae near active cormorant islands with high nest density was elevated, and epiphytic algae increased relative to F. vesiculosus. Third, 3 of 5 invertebrate taxa (Jaera albifrons, Gammarus spp., and Chironomidae) showed increased biomasses near islands with high nest density; but, contrary to former fertilization studies, only J. albifrons increased in abundance compared to reference islands. We conclude that runoff from seabird colonies has a profound effect on primary producers and some consumers in the surrounding water, but only if the colonies exceed a certain nest density. Thus, seabirds not only affect marine communities via top-town forces as commonly assumed, but also via bottom-up forces by concentrating nutrients around their nesting islands. Consequently, seabird islands can be seen as natural fertilization experiments and give important insights to the effects of eutrophication of marine systems.

Seabirds can strongly affect several major factors correlated with species diversity by concentrating marine nutrients on their nesting islands and by physically disturbing island vegetation. In this study, we investigated the effects of nesting cormorants on the abundance, species richness, and composition of plants and arthropods (Coleoptera, Heteroptera, Araneae, and Chironomidae) on islands in Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Nesting cormorants negatively affected plant species richness and vegetation cover and that changed plant species composition. The effect of nesting cormorants on island arthropods varied between feeding groups and sampling methods. Most orders did not change in abundance or species richness but some, such as coleopterans and spiders changed in species composition. Herbivorous coleopterans were generally negatively affected by cormorants whereas fungivorous species and scavengers were generally positively affected. In structural equation modeling we found that the effect of cormorants was sometimes direct, such as on scavengers, but many effects on island consumers were mediated by changes in vegetation caused by cormorant presence. Overall, arthropod communities were highly dissimilar between cormorant and reference islands, and we therefore conclude that nesting cormorants not only affect the diversity of their nesting islands but also of the archipelago as a whole. The total diversity in the archipelago may increase through regional increased habitat heterogeneity and by adding species which are favored by seabirds (e.g. scavenging and fungivorous coleopterans).

Ecological stoichiometry has emerged as a tool for exploring nutrient demand and evolutionary responses to nutrient limitation. Previous studies of insects have found predictable variability in stoichiometry, both in relation to body size and trophic mode, at ordinal levels or higher. Our study further examines the evolutionary and ecological lability in these traits by comparing the effects of body size, trophic mode (larval and adult) and larval habitat on the stoichiometry of insects within one order (Diptera). The study also expands on previous work by analyzing trophic mode both at coarse (detritivore, herbivore, predator) and fine (high‐ vs low‐ nutrient quality resources within trophic categories) scales and by comparing nutrient stoichiometry in two geographical regions, Sweden and Arizona. As predicted, adults feeding on nectar or pollen had the lowest body N content in the dataset. Additionally, for Diptera with predatory larvae, species low N diets had lower body N content than those with high N diets. However, body N content was not consistently lower for all species with low N resources, as species feeding on plant material were indistinguishable in stoichiometry from predators with high N diets. We suggest that these results emerge because larval resource exploitation is poorly understood in herbivorous Diptera species. Body P content for Swedish Diptera decreased with body size for all trophic modes, and the only difference among trophic modes was that blood feeders had higher P content than other groups. The regional comparison further showed that the allometry of body P content is a labile trait that may vary at regional scales, as there was no allometric scaling of body P content in the Arizona data set, in contrast to the Swedish data set. These results are not easily explained by existing theoretical frameworks, but instead point to a general context‐dependence of P stoichiometry, which should now be a focus for future work.

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