<P> Shellfish are also ecosystem engineers because they: 1) Filter suspended particles from the water column; 2) Remove excess nutrients from coastal bays through denitrification; 3) Serve as natural coastal buffers, absorbing wave energy and reducing erosion from boat wakes, sea level rise and storms; 4) Provide nursery habitat for fish that are valuable to coastal economies . </P> <P> Fungi contribute to nutrient cycling and nutritionally rearrange patches of ecosystem creating niches for other organisms . In that way fungi in growing dead wood allow xylophages to grow and develop and xylophages in turn affect dead wood, contributing to wood decomposition and nutrient cycling in the forest floor . </P> <P> Nutrient cycling has a historical foothold in the writings of Charles Darwin in reference to the decomposition actions of earthworms . Darwin wrote about "the continued Following the Greeks, the idea of a hydrological cycle (water is considered a nutrient) was validated and quantified by Halley in 1687 . </P> <P> In 1926 Vernadsky coined the term biogeochemistry as a sub-discipline of geochemistry . However, the term nutrient cycle pre-dates biogeochemistry in a pamphlet on silviculture in 1899: "These demands by no means pass over the fact that at places where sufficient quantities of humus are available and where, in case of continuous decomposition of litter, a stable, nutrient humus is present, considerable quantities of nutrients are also available from the biogenic nutrient cycle for the standing timber . In 1898 there is a reference to the nitrogen cycle in relation to nitrogen fixing microorganisms . Other uses and variations on the terminology relating to the process of nutrient cycling appear throughout history: </P>

How do plants continuously recycle the earth's inorganic nutrients