Animals can be important in modulating ecosystem‐level nutrient cycling, although their importance varies greatly among species and ecosystems. Nutrient cycling rates of individual animals represent valuable data for testing the predictions of important frameworks such as the Metabolic Theory of Ecology ( MTE ) and ecological stoichiometry ( ES ). They also represent an important set of functional traits that may reflect both...

Disease has caused striking declines in wildlife and threatens numerous species with extinction. Theory suggests that the ecology and density‐dependence of transmission dynamics can determine the probability of disease‐caused extinction, but few empirical studies have simultaneously examined multiple factors influencing disease impact. We show, in hibernating bats infected with Geomyces destructans , that impacts of disease on...