Cover letter
Dear editor,
On behalf of my co-authors and myself, I am submitting the manuscript entitled “Extreme ecosystem engineering: The impact of marmots on vegetation cover and plant nitrogen and phosphorus content in a cold, extremely arid mountain environment.” to Ecology and Evolution.
Burrowing animals influence their environment in several ways, one of which is the impact on plants by fertilization via excretion on one hand and herbivory on the other. Literature says, that the role of ecosystem engineers increases with increasing abiotic stress. We studied the impact of marmots on vegetation cover and nutrient content in very harsh abiotic conditions in a high-mountain glacier valley in Eastern Pamir, where plant life is supressed by cold and extreme aridity. Our results contradict the abovementioned paradigm, as we found very little evidence on the impact of the presence of marmot burrows on the studied parameters. At the same time, it is hard to understand how plants withstand the herbivore pressure and appear irrespectively of the proximity of marmot burrows. We are trying to answer some of these questions in our manuscript.
To our knowledge, the submitted manuscript is the first to study the role of long-tailed marmots as ecosystem engineers, and to deal with the impact of burrow-dwelling mammals on plants in such extreme abiotic conditions. As alpine habitats are especially threatened by climate change, and glaciers are retreating, revealing areas of bare soil, it is important to study the mechanisms which shape life in this type of ecosystem.
I find the submission guidelines and journal philosophy presented on the website very author-friendly, which was a very important factor while choosing Ecology and Evolution for the first submission of our manuscript.
Kindest regards,
Piotr Chibowski