Fruit flies of the genus Drosophila have independently invaded deserts around the world on numerous occasions. To understand the physiological mechanisms allowing these small organisms to survive and thrive in arid environments, we performed a phylogenetic analysis of water balance in Drosophila species from different habitats. Desert (cactophilic) species were more resistant to desiccation tha...

Army ants are well known for their destructive raids of other ant colonies. Some known defensive strategies include nest evacuation, modification of nest architecture, blockade of nest entrances using rocks or debris, and direct combat outside the nest. Since army ants highly prefer Pheidole ants as prey in desert habitats, there may be strong selective pressure on Pheidole to evolve defensive ...

Speciation can proceed rapidly when natural and sexual selection act in concert. For example speciation can be accelerated when traits that confer a selective advantage in a particular habitat also influence mate preference. Studying parallel but evolutionarily independent instances of ecological divergence can illuminate the interaction between natural and sexual selection during speciation. L...

Caragana korshinskii Kom. is widely distributed in various habitats, including gravel desert, clay desert, fixed and semi-fixed sand, and saline land in the Asian and African deserts. To date, no previous genomic information or EST-SSR marker has been reported in Caragana Fabr. genus. In this study, more than two billion bases of high-quality sequence of C. korshinskii were generated by using i...

Abundance of invasive plants is often attributed to their ability ot outcompete native species. We compared resource acquisition and allocation of the invasive annual grass Bromus madritensis subsp. rubens with that of two native Mojave Desert annuals, Vulpia octoflora and Descurainia pinnata, in a glasshouse experiment. Each species was grown in monoculture at two densities and two levels of N...

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...

A fundamental step in conserving biodiversity is identification of quality habitat needed to sustain populations of target species. We used coarse scale environmental features (soil water holding capacity, soil texture, slope, elevation, and proximity to drainage channels) to predict habitat suitability for four species of desert amphibians in Big Bend National Park, USA: Scaphiopus couchii, Bu...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY The evolutionary drivers and proximal regulators of mast-seeding are well understood for species of mesic environments, but how these regulators interact with high spatial and interannual variability in growing-season precipitation for a masting species in a desert environment has never been examined. METHOD We followed flowering and seed production in 16 populations of t...

ABsTl•CT.--Numbers of nestlings fledged per pair per season were calculated for 35 species of passerine birds in four localities from data on length of breeding season, clutch size, nesting mortality, and length of nest cycle. Mean numbers of nestlings fledged was 6.42 for 12 woodland and edge species in Kansas, 4.33 for 8 species in lower Sonoran desert habitat in Arizona, 2.36 for 6 species i...

Borax mining at the Rio Tinto boron mine in Boron, California has caused pollution of soil, desertification of local habitats, and loss of biodiversity due to severe boron contamination. I conducted a phytoremediation study to test the effects arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in association with native plant species. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi ...