SCIENCE@home

Soil Disturbance of Plateau Zokor (Eospalax baileyi) Promotes the Stability of Alpine Plant Communities

Xidong Zhu,Feiyang Xue,Zhiying Zhang,Rui Dong,Limin Hua,Guohui Ye

Published 2025 in Plants

ABSTRACT

Alpine meadows on the Tibetan Plateau experience chronic, fine-scale disturbances from the plateau zokor (Eospalax baileyi), a subterranean rodent that alters soil and vegetation structure through persistent burrowing and mounding. While classical theory predicts that plant community stability peaks at intermediate disturbance levels, this may not apply under spatially heterogeneous disturbance regimes. We assessed community stability across a five-level zokor disturbance gradient using a multi-indicator framework integrating compositional variability (average variation degree, AVD), co-occurrence-based cohesion, indicator species analysis, and boosted regression tree (BRT) modeling. Stability (1−AVD) peaked under extreme disturbance, alongside reduced indicator species richness and the dominance of disturbance-tolerant taxa. Increased cohesion suggested stronger species associations. Drivers of stability shifted from plant attributes under low disturbance to soil constraints (bulk density and moisture) under high disturbance. These results challenge the intermediate disturbance–stability paradigm and suggest that abiotic filtering can promote compositional convergence and structural stability. Our findings highlight the importance of spatial disturbance patterns in shaping community resilience and provide early warning indicators and targeted guidance for managing alpine grasslands under subterranean disturbance.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-100 of 104 references · Page 1 of 2

12
Next

CITED BY

  • No citing papers are available for this paper.

Showing 0-0 of 0 citing papers · Page 1 of 1