  Dippers are typically low-mass, pre-main-sequence stars that display dips in
their light curves. These dips have been attributed to dusty warps that form in
the inner part of the disk. Our goal is to derive the properties of dipper
stars in Taurus to assess the physical mechanisms that induce dipper light
curves. We used the light curves of K2 C4 and C13 to select a dipper sample
among 179 members and possible members of the Taurus star-forming region based
on the light-curve morphology. We studied the periodicities by combining
periodograms with wavelet analysis and derived the stellar parameters from the
photometry. We also studied the morphology of the photometric dips. We find a
dipper occurrence of ~30% in disk-bearing stars observed with K2 that were
identified visually by us. This represents a lower limit to their true
occurrence. About half of the dippers are aperiodic, and most of these are
dominated by another type of variability. The chosen sample is of late spectral
type (K/M), low mass and moderate mass accretion rates and has periods of a few
days. We observed a transient dipper over a few rotation cycles and a dipper
with a changing period. The structure of the dips can be complex and varies
strongly over timescales of down to one stellar rotation. The corotation radii
are located at a few stellar radii, and the temperatures at corotation allow
dust survival. Many of the systems are seen at moderate to high inclination. We
find that the angular extension of the dusty structure producing the dips is
correlated with the stellar period. Magnetospheric accretion, which causes an
accretion column and its base to occult the star, can explain most of the
observed light curves. Although compatible with the model, many of the stellar
inclination angles are moderate and do not exclude mechanisms other than the
occultation by an inner disk warp to account for dipper light curves.
