The long-tailed marmot is a large squirrel found in Central Asia’s high mountain meadows.
Marmots have a stout, box-shaped body and strong legs and claws for digging. The long-tailed marmot is distinguished by its long tail.
Long-tailed marmots live in Central Asian mountains and dig burrows. In an eastern Pamir glacier valley in Tajikistan, researchers measured plants and feces along a distance gradient extending up to 20 metres from burrows. They recorded plant nutrients and vegetation cover at about 4,100–4,400 metres above sea level.
Only one of six plant species, Erysimum altaicum, had higher nitrogen and phosphorus near burrows. Plants did not grow on the burrow mounds, and the relationship between burrows and vegetation cover was weak. In this dry valley, water availability strongly limited plant growth even where marmot activity added nutrients to the soil.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In the dry eastern Pamir valley, only one of six plant species had more nutrients near marmot burrows. Water availability also strongly limited plant growth.