pika: Nitrogen content of soils under pika haypiles.
Description
Aho (1998) hypothesized that pikas worked as ecosystem engineers by building relatively rich soils (via decomposing haypiles and fecal accumulations) in otherwise barren scree.
Soils from twenty one paired on-haypile and off-haypile sites were gathered from Rendezvous Peak Grand Teton National Park to determine if the habitats differed in total soil nitrogen.References
Aho, K., Huntly N., Moen J., and T. Oksanen. 1998. Pikas (Ochotona princeps: Lagomorpha) as allogenic engineers in an alpine ecosystem. Oecologia. 114 (3): 405-409.