BACKGROUND The Hajar Mountains of Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the highest mountain range in Eastern Arabia. As a result of their old geological origin, geographical isolation, complex topography and local climate, these mountains provide an important refuge for endemic and relict species of plants and animals with strong Indo-Iranian affinities. Among vertebrates, the rock climbi...

The biome concept is used to classify vegetation into distinct groups. This concept integrates the relationship of plants and animals with their distributions. North America is comprised of 11 biomes (arctic tundra, desert, broad sclerophyll, pinyon-juniper, temperate grasslands, northern coniferous forest, moist temperate coniferous forest, temperate deciduous forest, mountain complex, subtrop...

Aim To detect possible expansion of boreal forest stands in response to recent warming. Previous modelling studies have concluded that major shifts in vegetation patterns, including changes in boreal forest extent, could arise during the next two centuries under global warming scenarios. However, ®eld investigations of tree stands at ecotones have so far revealed little indication of stand resp...

Patrick C. Tobin*, Barry B. Bai, Donald A. Eggen and Donna S. Leonard Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Northern Research Station, Morgantown, West Virginia 26505, USA; Oregon Department of Agriculture, Plant Division, Salem, Oregon 97301, USA; Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Forestry, Division of Forest Pest Management, Middletown...

USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, 5985 Highway K, Rhinelander, WI, 54501 USA Department of Forest Ecosystems & Society, Oregon State University, 321 Richardson Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA Direction de la recherche forestière, Ministère des Forêts, de la Faune et des Parcs du Québec, 2700 rue Einstein, Québec, G1P 3W8, Canada Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resource...

Fire and insects are natural disturbance agents in many forest ecosystems, often interacting to affect succession, nutrient cycling, and forest species composition. We review literature pertaining to effects of fire-insect interactions on ecological succession, use of prescribed fire for insect pest control, and effects of fire on insect diversity from northern and boreal forests in North Ameri...

Documenting the Neotropical amphibian diversity has become a major challenge facing the threat of global climate change and the pace of environmental alteration. Recent molecular phylogenetic studies have revealed that the actual number of species in South American tropical forests is largely underestimated, but also that many lineages are millions of years old. The genera Phyzelaphryne (1 sp.)...

—Prescribed burning and mechanical thinning are used to manage fuels within many western North American forest ecosystems, but few studies have examined the relative impacts of these treatments on forest wildlife. We sampled northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus) and microhabitat variables in burned, thinned and control stands of mixed-conifer forest of the southern Sierra Nevada at the...

the genus trachylepis fitzinger, 1843 encompasses two-three species in iran: trachylepis vittata (olivier, 1804) distributed in western iran, west of the zagros mountains; t.septemtaeniata (reuss, 1834) in southern regions of the zagros mountains and t. aurata transcaucasica chernov, 1926 from northern to central parts of the zagros mountains. for study of geographic variation in the latter two...