Vegetation and vertebrate abundance as drivers of bioturbation patterns along a climate gradient.

ABSTRACT: Bioturbators shape their environment with considerable consequences for ecosystem processes. However, both the composition and the impact of bioturbator communities may change along climatic gradients. For burrowing animals, their abundance and composition depend on climatic and other abiotic components, with ants and mammals dominating in arid and semiarid areas, and earthworms in humid areas. Moreover, the activity of burrowing animals is often positively associated with vegetation cover (biotic component). These observations highlight the need to understand the relative contributions of abiotic and biotic components in bioturbation in order to predict soil-shaping processes along broad climatic gradients. In this study, we estimated the activity of animal bioturbation by counting the de

SUBMITTER: Kraus D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8896722 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature