Multifactorial experiments in which domestic seeds in shallow glass containers were distributed in desert and montane habitats provided data on identity of seed predators (whether rodents or ants), spatial and temporal pattern of their foraging activities, and their preferences for sizes and species of seeds. The results indicate that in some desert ecosystems both rodents and ants are importan...

To study life in the Mars-like Atacama Desert of Chile we have created a robot, Zoë, and conducted three seasons of technical and scientific experiments. We describe Zoë’s exploration algorithms and architecture and assess a total of six months of long distance survey traverses. To date Zoë has navigated autonomously over 250 km. Its average distance per autonomous traverse is 672 m with 75 tra...

The desert lizards (Meroles: Lacertidae) form a small clade of ground-dwelling taxa inhabiting arid southwest Africa (Arnold, 1991). All seven species have some portion of their range in the Namib Desert, and four of the seven are Namib endemics. Their close geographic ties to the Namib are hypothesized to reflect an interesting pattern of speciation, one in which the lineage infiltrated progre...

The field sampling of the Aphodiini scarab beetles in Dosang environs (Astrakhan Province, European Russia) in 2006-2012 resulted in the collection of 44 species. All but one of them belong to Aphodius Hellwig (sensu lato). This is apparently the richest recorded local Aphodiini fauna in Russia. The high Aphodiini diversity in the area can be explained by the long vegetative season with high ef...

We tested the hypothesis that birds in arid environments, where primary productivity is low and surface water is scarce, have reduced energy expenditure and water loss compared with their mesic counterparts. Using both conventional least squares regression and regression based on phylogenetically independent contrasts, we showed that birds from desert habitats have reduced basal and field metab...

Water stress is a particularly important problem for insects and other small organisms in arid environments. Cactophilic fruit flies in the genus Drosophila have invaded deserts on numerous occasions, including multiple independent invasions of North American deserts. Because the evolutionary history of this genus is so well studied, we can investigate the mechanisms of adaptation in a rigorous...

Life in desert soil is marked by episodic pulses of water and nutrients followed by long periods of drought. While the desert flora and fauna flourish after rainfall the response of soil microorganisms remains unclear and understudied. We provide the first systematic study of the role of soil aqueous habitat dynamics in shaping microbial community composition and diversity. Detailed monitoring ...

The sand dunes and inter-dune zones of the hyper-arid central Namib Desert represent heterogeneous soil habitats. As little is known about their indigenous edaphic bacterial communities, we aimed to evaluate their diversity and factors of assembly and hypothesized that soil physicochemistry gradients would strongly shape dune/interdune communities. We sampled a total of 125 samples from 5 paral...

In open, arid environments with limited shelter there may be strong selection on small prey species to develop behaviors that facilitate predator avoidance. Here, we predicted that rodents should avoid predator odor and open habitats to reduce their probability of encounter with potential predators, and tested our predictions using a native Australian desert rodent, the spinifex hopping-mouse (...

Condensation of water vapor in the exhaled air stream as it passes over previously cooled membranes of the nasopharynx is thought to be a mechanism that reduces respiratory water loss in mammals and birds. Such a mechanism could be important in the overall water economy of these vertebrates, especially those species occupying desert habitats. However, this hypothesis was originally based on mea...