Positive role of plateau pika (Ochotona coronae) on environmental quality at low and moderate density on the Tibetan plateau: Evidence from a meta-analysis

The roles of plateau pika (Ochotona coronae) in the Tibetan Plateau are often controversial, because it is often regarded as a destructive pest or an ecosystem engineer. Here a meta-analysis using 72 paired observations was conducted to examine whether the impacts of plateau pika on environmental quality (i.e., plant and soil properties) depend on population density in the Tibetan Plateau. Pika population density was used as a proxy for disturbance intensity. The pika disturbance intensity was divided into five groups based on the number of burrows, including low disturbance intensity (LD) (9–30 burrows per ha), medium disturbance intensity (MD) (31–100 burrows per ha), high disturbance intensity (HD) (101–170 burrows per ha), extreme disturbance intensity (ED) (171–240 burrows per ha) and uncontrolled (or excessive) disturbance intensity (UD) (>241 burrows per ha). Given that sample sizes in some of the groups are small (especially for the HD), we further pooled the disturbance groups including the LD–MD and HD–UD. Overall, relative to control (i.e., no disturbing), there was a great increase (80.3%) in aboveground biomass under the LD–MD, whereas a decrease of 41.1% occurred under the HD–UD. At the same time, plant coverage, species richness, height, and belowground biomass greatly decreased only in the HD–UD. Furthermore, the effect size of plant coverage, species richness, and aboveground biomass also declined with pika burrow density significantly. With regard to soil properties, there was a significant increase in soil organic carbon, ammonium nitrogen, and soil organic carbon stock under the LD–MD, whereas a decrease under the HD–UD. In addition, soil total nitrogen, total potassium, and nitrate nitrogen increased at the LD–MD and HD–UD. Nevertheless, the effect size of these soil properties (with >20 observations) was not related to pika burrow density. In summary, there is an implication that the low and moderate disturbance of pikas is beneficial to maintain and promote ecosystem functioning in the Tibetan grasslands. In the future pikas' eradication policy should be reconsidered in alpine grassland management.