Wildlife associated with burrows of Dolichotis patagonum in central west Argentina Ailin Gatica 1,2 , Ana Cecilia Ochoa 1,2 , Natalia Mariana Denkiewicz 1 , Antonio Marcelo Mangione 1,2 1 Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científcas y Técnicas, Almirante Brown 907, CP 5700 San Luis, Argentina 2 Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Química Bioquímica y Farmacia, Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Av. Ejército de los Andes 950, CP 5700, San Luis, Argentina Corresponding author: Ailin Gatica (ailin_gatica@yahoo.com.ar) Academic editor: A. M. Leal-Zanchet  |  Received 1 June 2020  |  Accepted 11 September 2020  |  Published 25 September 2020 Citation: Gatica A, Ochoa AC, Denkiewicz NM, Mangione AM (2020) Wildlife associated with burrows of Dolichotis patagonum in central west Argentina. Neotropical Biology and Conservation 15(3): 399–407. https://doi. org/10.3897/neotropical.15.e54979 Abstract Community structure is strongly infuenced by positive interactions between species. Detecting and describing these interactions is essential in the study of communities. Dolichotis patagonum Zimmer- mann, 1780 (CN: mara) is a cavid rodent that builds burrows for breeding. In this study, camera traps were used to identify which species use the burrows built by maras in Sierra de las Quijadas National Park, San Luis, Argentina. All burrows were used by other species. A total of 68.7% of all medium- and small-sized taxa recorded in this study used the burrows. Tis is a clear indicator of the role of D. patagonum as an ecosystem engineer in this environment. Keywords camera traps, ecosystem engineer, mara, Sierra de las Quijadas National Park Neotropical Biology and Conservation 15(3): 399–407 (2020) doi: 10.3897/neotropical.15.e54979 Copyright Ailin Gatica et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. SHORT COMMUNICATION