There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancien...

Two new megadrile earthworms from the steppes, the first species wholly from Outer Mongolia, are ascribed to the partially parthenogenetic Eisenia nordenskioldi (Eisen, 1879) species-complex. Taxonomic justification of sympatric Eisenia nordenskioldi mongol and Eisenia nordenskioldi onon ssp. n. are supported by mtDNA COI barcodes. The unreliability of molecular differentiation based on voucher...

Over the period 2006–2010, 40 species of primary parasitoids belonging to eleven genera were found and reared from 50 species of host aphids, from a total of 106 host plants collected from 62 localities all around Slovenia. Over 230 tritrophic associations have been reviewed, including four associations which are reported for the first time; Ephedrus plagiator/ Staticobium limonii/ Limonium ang...

Abstract Grazing exclusion has been proved to be an effective approach for naturally restoring degraded rangelands. Still, the effect of this management practice on plant community composition and structure is ambiguous, especially under prolonged repeated drought events. Here, we investigated responses (i.e. incidence-based) abundance-based) short-term sheep grazing severe episode in arid step...

The United Nations defines desertification as the loss of productivity in arid and semiarid environments. extended steppes Patagonia harbor small meadows whose compounded area is comparatively small, but their aboveground net primary production (ANPP) up to ten times higher than surroundings. These then represent a key ecosystem for cattle grazing systems, there are no descriptions trends ANPP ...

For the first time, an assessment of phenotypic variability and genetic polymorphism was performed on endemic plants Scutellaria tuvensis Juz. growing in Tuva (five populations; Russia). Based morphological traits individuals, principal component analysis clustered individuals into three groups depending characteristics their habitats: group 1 turned out to be sampled from beach gravel, 2 a det...

The paper is aimed to assess the effect of anthropogenic fragmentation on biodiversity plants in northern meadow steppes located southeast Nizhny Novgorod region. were chosen as a model group. A quantitative analysis dependence number species area habitats was carried out according data collected at 158 sites and steppe meadows with total 10752 ha. For each surveyed, area, proportion, covered c...