Abstract:
Mammal burrowing plays an important role in soil translocation and habitat creation in many
environments. As a consequence, many burrowing mammals have at some point been studied in
an ecosystem engineering context. From a geomorphological point of view, one of the focus
areas of burrowing mammal research is on the amount of soil that is excavated and the rate at
which this happens. As such, reviews exist on the volumes and rates of sediment removal by
burrowing mammals in specific environments or for specific groups of species. Here a
standardised comparison of mammal burrowing across a broad range of burrowing mammal
species and environments is provided, focussing on both burrow volume and excavation rate.
Through an ISI Web of Science-based literature search, articles presenting estimates of burrow
volumes and/or excavation rate were identified. Relationships between species body size and
burrow volume/excavation rate were explored and the influence of sociality and method of
burrow volume estimation was assessed. The results show that, although bigger species construct bigger burrows, it is the smaller species that remove more sediment per unit time at larger, sitelevel
spatial scales. Burrow volume estimates are, however, independent of species sociality
(solitary vs group-living) and method of burrow volume estimation (excavation-based vs moundbased).
These results not only confirm previously established relationships between species body
size and burrow volume, but, more importantly, they add to this, by exploring larger scale
impacts of burrowing mammals along a body size gradient.
