From foraging to decomposition: Large vertebrates as biotic drivers of trace element cycling across landscapes

Animals play an important role in elemental cycles that underpin ecosystem functioning through their foraging, movement and waste excretion. Yet animals also play a distinct but often overlooked role in the cycling of trace elements by incorporating potentially scarce trace elements into their tissues and returning significant quantities to the local environment when their carcasses decompose.

This gap in our understanding of trace element cycling through animal decomposition means we lack a complete picture of the fundamental zoogeochemical processes that integrate animals within landscapes.

Here, we present a perspective on the role large animals play in linking trace elemental cycles from local to landscape scales during their lives (via accumulation and excretion) and after their death (via carcass decomposition).

We highlight how large vertebrates, and their decomposition, can redistribute trace elements across spatial scales and may serve as tools for managing trace elemental cycling and enhancing landscape heterogeneity.