The fungus Piriformospora indica was first isolated from plants growing in arid, hot desert conditions and has been shown to have significant potential as a biocontrol and biofertilising organism in barley under optimal growth conditions. However, it was not thought to be effective in plants grown in low temperatures and has consequently not been well tested in cold-stressed crops. This study s...

Floristics of Vittadinia triloba communities in Central Otago and the upper Waitaki valley and Rumex acetosella communities in the upper Waitaki, are compared with each other and with similar communities elsewhere in the South Island. Many species are common to all semi-arid areas, but each area has as its own special features, either the presence of a particular species or the greater abundanc...

Many water-related illnesses show an increase during the wet season. This is often due to fecal contamination from runoff, yet, it is unknown whether seasonal changes in water availability may also play a role in increased illness via changes in the type of primary water source used by households. Very little is known about the dynamic aspects of access to water and changes in source type acros...

Deserts are not usually considered biodiversity hotspots, but desert microbiotic crust communities exhibit a rich diversity of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic life forms. Like many communities dominated by microscopic organisms, they defy characterization by traditional species-counting approaches to assessing biodiversity. Here we use exclusive molecular phylodiversity (E) to quantify the amou...

The temporal dynamics of desert soil microbial communities are poorly understood. Given the implications for ecosystem functioning under a global change scenario, a better understanding of desert microbial community stability is crucial. Here, we sampled soils in the central Namib Desert on sixteen different occasions over a one-year period. Using Illumina-based amplicon sequencing of the 16S r...

[1] We measured soil nitrogen (N) cycling and fluxes of N2O and NO in three land-use types across the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona. Urbanization increased N2O emissions compared to native landscapes, primarily due to the expansion of fertilized and irrigated lawns. Fluxes of N2O from lawns ranged from 18 to 80 mg N m!2 h!1 and were significantly larger than managed xeric landscapes (2....

Global patterns in diversity were estimated for cyanobacteria-dominated hypolithic communities that colonize ventral surfaces of quartz stones and are common in desert environments. A total of 64 hypolithic communities were recovered from deserts on every continent plus a tropical moisture sufficient location. Community diversity was estimated using a combined t-RFLP fingerprinting and high thr...

a r t i c l e i n f o Deserts are often neglected in what concerns conservation funding. Ecotourism, an alternative land-use with ability to preserve threatened biodiversity, is also less developed in these arid lands. Since ecotourism can constitute a complementary approach to natural and cultural resources and to local economy development, more investment should be allocated to desert ecotour...