The nutrients excreted by fish in their “pee” may be critical to the health of coastal ecosystems. But knowing whether generalizations can be made about how to predict these nutrient levels in various ecosystems has vexed researchers – until now.

In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, North Carolina State University associate professor Craig Layman and colleagues show that ecologists can better predict the rates of how these chemical nutrients are transferred by fish if they know the various fish species living in an ecosystem, along with the body size of the fish.

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This post was originally published in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences News.