Abstract

The activity of small mammalian herbivores influences grassland ecosystem services in arid and semi-arid regions. This study took plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) as example animal to investigate the effect of small mammalian herbivores on meadow ecosystem services in alpine regions. In this study, a home-range scale was used measure the forage availability, water conservation, carbon sequestration and soil nutrient maintenance services (total nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) of topsoil layer; and a quadrat scale was used to assess the biodiversity conservation service of alpine meadows. This study showed that plateau pika presence led to lower forage availability and water conservation services, and led to higher biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, soil nitrogen and phosphorus maintenance services of meadow ecosystem, whereas it had no impact on soil potassium maintenance service of meadow ecosystem in alpine regions. This study further found that the forage availability, biodiversity conservation, and soil nutrient maintenance services of meadow ecosystem in alpine regions firstly increased, and later decreased as the disturbance intensity of plateau pikas increased, whereas the water conservation service tended to decrease with the increasing disturbance intensity of plateau pikas. These results not only present a possible pattern of plateau pikas influencing the ecosystem services of meadow ecosystem in alpine regions, and consummate the small mammalian herbivores in relation to grassland ecosystem services.

Highlights

  • The palatable plant biomass (Fig. 1A) and soil water storage (Fig. 1B) were lower in the plots with plateau pikas than in the plots without plateau pikas, indicating that the presence of plateau pika led to lower provisioning services of forage availability and regulating services of water conservation in alpine meadows

  • These results demonstrate that the presence of small mammalian herbivores in relation to the forage availability service of grassland ecosystems may be related to environmental conditions, indicating that the presence of small mammalian herbivores is disadvantageous to the forage availability service in semi-arid and alpine regions, but it is beneficial to the forage availability service in arid regions

  • This study focused on plateau pikas to investigate the responses of forage availability, water conservation, carbon sequestration, soil nutrient maintenance, and biodiversity conservation services of meadow ecosystems to the presence of a small mammalian herbivore and its disturbance intensity across five sites

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Summary

Introduction

Grasslands provide multiple ecosystem services, including provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005), which sustain animal production, flora and fauna, and other human welfare (Costanza et al, 1997; Zhang et al, 2018; Dong et al, 2020). These ecosystem services are affected by multiple biotic factors, such as soil microbial communities (Van Eekeren et al, 2010), grazing by large herbivores (Lu et al, 2017), and the presence of small herbivores (Delibes-Mateos et al, 2011; Martínez-Estévez et al, 2013). How small mammalian herbivores influence the ecosystem services in alpine meadows as much as they do in arid and semi-arid regions has not been well documented

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