Vegetation and vertebrate abundance as drivers of bioturbation patterns along a climate gradient.

Bioturbators shape their environment with considerable consequences for ecosystem processes. However, both the composition and the impact of bioturbator communities may change along climatic gradients. For burrowing animals, their abundance and composition depend on climatic and other abiotic components, with ants and mammals dominating in arid and semiarid areas, and earthworms in humid areas.