In arid and semiarid ecosystems, the potential threats of exotic invasive species are enhanced due to increasing human activities. Biological soil crusts (BSCs), acting as arid ecosystem engineers, may play an important role in preventing the establishment of exotic invasive plants. Our goal was to examine whether BSCs could inhibit the establishment of probable exotic plant species originating...

In recent years, the use of soil microbial potential including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi is widely considered to enhance the better growth and nutrition of plants. This research was conducted in order to study the impact of mycorrhizal fungi on the increase of yarrow production and the plant establishment affected by the symbiotic ...

Seed predation is an important biotic filter that can influence abundance and spatial distributions of native species through differential effects on recruitment. This filter may also influence the relative abundance of nonnative plants within habitats and the communities' susceptibility to invasion via differences in granivore identity, abundance, and food preference. We evaluated the effect o...

in order to evaluate a better sowing date of chickpea cultivars in dry land conditions, a factorial experiment in randomized complete block design with four replications was carried out at research station of bahar (hamadan province) during 2005-2006 cropping season. two planting time included winter and spring and four chickpea cultivars (cvs.) including one local (check) and three improved cv...

Invasive plant species are among the major threats to freshwater biodiversity. Few experimental studies have investigated whether native plant diversity can provide biotic resistance to invaders in freshwater ecosystems. At small spatial scales, invasion resistance may increase with plant species richness due to a better use of available resources, leaving less available for a potential invader...