Banner-tailed kangaroo rat

Brown, J.H. et Heske, E.J. (1990). Control of a desert-grassland transition by a keystone rodent guild. Science, 250(4988), 1705–1707.

Long-term experiment near Portal, Arizona, at a site located precisely at the natural transition between shrub desert and grassland. By harvesting large seeds and disturbing the soil through their burrows, kangaroo rats limit the establishment of grassland grasses; their exclusion allowed these grasses to triple in abundance over twelve years and opened the way for other rodent species typical of the grassland.

Chew, R.M. et Whitford, W.G. (1992). A long-term positive effect of kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spectabilis) on creosotebushes (Larrea tridentata). Journal of Arid Environments, 22(4), 375–386.

Burrow mounds, even abandoned ones, become nitrogen-rich "nutrient islands." Creosote bushes established within their zone of influence continue their vegetative and reproductive growth sheltered from the water and nutrient limitations affecting the rest of the population, even though the kangaroo rat is otherwise known to hold back the expansion of these same shrubs elsewhere in its territory. The two mechanisms coexist without their net balance at the landscape scale being established.

Christensen, E.M., Simpson, G.L. et Ernest, S.K.M. (2019). Established rodent community delays recovery of dominant competitor following experimental disturbance. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286(1917), 20192269.

This recolonization asymmetry is a typical signal of what ecology calls a priority effect or the onset of bistability: once an alternative plant community (grassland) establishes itself in the kangaroo rat's absence, it resists the rodent's return more than simply bare soil would — so the rodent's disappearance could have an effect harder to reverse than a mere temporary pause.