Fig. 2: Cetacean communities’ nutrient release correlates with indexes of ecosystem productivity.

Mean estimates of nutrient loads released by cetacean communities in 14 contrasted areas were normalized per nutrient and plotted against two indicators of ecosystem productivity: (a) the mean surface chlorophyll concentration (b) and the mean sea surface temperature estimated from satellite data on https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov. Mean nutrient release estimates result of a bioenergetic model supplemented with an original dataset of population abundances, diet composition, prey composition and metabolic data and set up with Monte-Carlo simulations combined with a bootstrap procedure with n = 1^e4. French Guyana area was removed for the left plot as the chlorophyll concentration estimate was driven by the water turbidity due to the Amazon River plume. Linear models were run for each nutrient and each slope was statistically significant (see Table 1). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.