Populations of Eruca sativa (Brassicaceae) from desert and Mediterranean (Med) habitats in Israel differ in their defense against larvae of the generalist Spodoptera littoralis but not the specialist Pieris brassicae. Larvae of the generalist insect feeding on plants of the Med population gained significantly less weight than those feeding on the desert plants, and exogenous application of meth...

Desert shrubs, a dominant component of desert ecosystems, need to maintain sufficient levels of nutrients in their different organs to ensure operation of various physiological functions for the purpose of survival and reproduction. In the present study, we analyzed 10 elements in leaves, stems, and roots of 24 dominant shrub species from 52 sites across a temperate desert ecosystem in northwes...

We performed a transplant experiment to compare the life histories and morphologies of five geographically representative antlion Myrmeleon hyalinus populations along a sharp climatic gradient, from a Mediterranean climate in Israel's north to a desert climate in the south. Larvae were raised in two environmental chambers simulating Mediterranean and desert climates to investigate the extent to...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Malaria is an important public health problem in northwestern desert part of Rajasthan. Since desert malaria is seasonal or unstable, there is a need to study its epidemiology in the totality to address factors like how malaria is introduced into desert every year and what are desert-specific transmission risk factors leading to epidemics? METHODS Twenty-six villages i...

The purpose of the current study was to examine the influence of perceived motivational climate on achievement goals in physical education using a structural equation mixture modeling (SEMM) analysis. Within one analysis, we identified groups of students with homogenous profiles in perceptions of motivational climate and examined the relationships between motivational climate, 2 x 2 achievement...

Desert species respond strongly to infrequent, intense pulses of precipitation. Consequently, indigenous flora has developed a rich repertoire of life-history strategies to deal with fluctuations in resource availability. Examinations of how future climate change will affect the biota often forecast negative impacts, but these-usually correlative-approaches overlook precipitation variation beca...

The Gurbantunggut Desert, the largest fixed and semi-fixed desert in China, is characterized by a predominant coverage of lichen-dominated biological soil crusts, which serve an indispensable role in sand fixation. Two findings of biological soil crusts have been disclosed from previous field observations: first, distribution of biological soil crusts is selective upon locations; second, specie...

Desert plants are exposed to a combination of environmental stress conditions, including water deficit, high temperature and high irradiance. We focused on antioxidative protection systems of C4 desert plant Haloxylon ammodendron and C3 desert plant Hedysarum scoparium within arid dune ecosystem with artificial controlling water availability. The activities of antioxidative enzymes (SOD, POD an...

The desert tortoise occurs in two strikingly different desert regimes in the southwestern United States. In the Mojave Desert, rainfall is more irregular and resources are more limited than in the Sonoran Desert. We examined the age structure of tortoise populations from these two deserts to determine whether the difference in resource availability has driven an evolutionary divergence in life ...