Spatial distribution of palatable and unpalatable plants can influence the foraging behaviour of herbivores, thereby changing plant-damage probabilities. Moreover, the immediate proximity to certain plants can benefit other plants that grow below them, where toxicity or spines act as a physical barrier or concealment against herbivores. This paper presents the results of a multi-scale experimen...

The distribution and behavior of foraging animals usually imply a balance between resource availability and predation risk. In some predators such as scorpions, cannibalism constitutes an important mortality factor determining their ecology and behavior. Climbing on vegetation by scorpions has been related both to prey availability and to predation (cannibalism) risk. We tested different hypoth...

Habitat distribution and seasonal occurrence of carabid beetles were determined using pitfall traps in 1999 and 2000 in the temperate forest zone of the Dongling Mountain, North China. Eight sites differing in vegetation and moisture were selected so as to represent four habitat types. Carabid assemblages of the six forested habitats (lowland, upland and coppice) were more similar to each other...

Comparison of several recent, publicly available and widely used land-cover products for the Eurasian Arctic revealed important differences in their representations of vegetation distribution. Such disparities have important implications for models that use these products as driving data sets to monitor vegetation and its role in carbon dynamics. The differences between GLC-2000 and MODIS.PFT a...

Puccinia psidii, the cause of a disease today commonly referred to as Myrtle rust, is considered a high priority quarantine threat globally. It has a wide host range in the Myrtaceae and it is feared that it may result in significant damage to native ecosystems where these plants occur. The fungus is also of considerable concern to plantation forestry industries that propagate Australian Eucaly...

Semiarid landscapes are characterized by vegetated surfaces. Understanding the impact of vegetation on aeolian soil erosion is important for reducing soil erosion or limiting crop damage through abrasion or burial. In the present study, a saltation model fully coupled with a large-eddy simulation airflow model is extended to vegetated landscapes. From this model, the sensitivity of sand erosion...

BACKGROUND In a semi-arid ecosystem, water is one of the most important factors that affect vegetation dynamics, such as shrub plantation. A water use strategy, including the main water source that a plant species utilizes and water use efficiency (WUE), plays an important role in plant survival and growth. The water use strategy of a shrub is one of the key factors in the evaluation of stabili...

Bioclimatic models are widely used to investigate the impacts of climate change on species distributions. Range shifts are expected to occur as species track their current climate niche yet the potential for exploitation of new ecological opportunities that may arise as ecosystems and communities remodel is rarely considered. Here we show that grasswrens of the Amytornis textilis-modestus compl...

Large, late-winter ptarmigan migrations heavily impact the shoot, plant, and patch architecture of shrubs that remain above the snow surface. Ptarmigan browsing on arctic shrubs was assessed in the vicinity of Toolik Lake, on the north side of the Brooks Range in Alaska. Data were collected in early May 2007, at maximum snow depth, after the bulk of the ptarmigan migration had passed through th...