Ornithogenic vegetation: How significant has the seabird influence been on the Aleutian Island vegetation during the Holocene?

In the Aleutian Islands during the Holocene, terrestrial predators were actually absent; as a result, large seabird colonies thrived along the coasts or across entire islands. Bird guano enriches the soil with nitrogen, which can lead to the formation of highly modified ornithogenic (bird-formed) ecosystems. For a more detailed investigation of avian influence, we reconstructed more than 10,000-year-old vegetation dynamics of the coast of Shemya Island (Near Islands) by pollen analysis.