DESERT RODENTS REDUCE SEEDLING RECRUITMENT OF SALSOLA PAULSENII

Assembly rules and competition in desert rodents.

North American desert rodents have long been a model system for the study of community structure and dynamics. Field experiments and nonmanipulative observations have provided consistent evidence that interspecific competition influences spatial patterns and dynamic processes of community organization. Some of the evidence comes from assembly rules, which document how the species that coexist i...

Continental Diversity of Chenopodium album Seedling Recruitment

Chenopodium album seedling emergence studies were conducted at nine European and two North American locations comparing local populations with a common population from Denmark (DEN-COM). Mortality risk. Weedy plant life history conforms to the time of mortality risk from either the environment (e.g. frozen soil in the winter) or cropping systems practices (e.g. herbicide use). C. album life his...

Seed Mucilage Improves Seedling Emergence of a Sand Desert Shrub

The success of seedling establishment of desert plants is determined by seedling emergence response to an unpredictable precipitation regime. Sand burial is a crucial and frequent environmental stress that impacts seedling establishment on sand dunes. However, little is known about the ecological role of seed mucilage in seedling emergence in arid sandy environments. We hypothesized that seed m...

Intra-guild Compensation Regulates Species Richness in Desert Rodents

Evidence from numerous studies suggests that species richness is an emergent property of local communities. The maintenance of species richness, despite changes in species composition and environmental conditions, requires compensatory colonization and extinction events with species coming from a regional pool. Using long-term data from a rodent community in the Chihuahuan Desert, we use random...

Intra-guild compensation regulatesspecies richness in desert rodents: reply