Vegetation and Habitat Diversity at the Southern Edge of the Sonoran Desert

More than one third of Forrest Shreve's (1951 ) Sonoran Desert lies within the boundaries of Sonora, the second largest state in Mexico. Five of the seven major vegetational subdivisions of the Sonoran Desert are found within Sonora as well, more than in any other state. It is safe to say that the specific biological diversity found in the Sonoran portion of the Sonoran Desert is greater than in any other desert in the world.

The Deep History of the Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert is considered to be the most “tropical” of the North American deserts. Its climate is virtually frost-free, and summer rainfall comes from the tropical oceans. The Sonoran Desert’s structurally diverse vegetation, which includes columnar cacti and leguminous trees, certainly differs from those of the shrub-dominated Great Basin, Mohave and Chihuahuan deserts. It has both geographic and biologic connections with more tropical communities.

Population trends, extinction risk, and conservation guidelines for Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls in the Sonoran Desert

Climatic flux together with anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover pose major threats to wildlife, but our understanding of their combined impacts is limited. In arid southwestern North America, ferruginous pygmy-owls (Glaucidium brasilianum) are of major conservation concern due to marked declines in abundance linked to changes in land use and land cover during the past century. We reassessed abundance trends of pygmy-owls in northern Mexico across 17 years (2000-2016), which included data gathered over four additional years since inferences were last reported.

Effects of Local and Landscape Processes on Animal Distribution and Abundance

Investigations of processes that drive animal distribution and abundance are often approached at one of two different scales and therefore focus on different processes. At local scales, animals are thought to select home ranges or territory patches in an ideal manner by occupying them in order of their fitness potential, but a variety of processes can decouple choices from their fitness consequences and create non-ideal patterns of distribution.

Origins and affinities of vertebrates of the North American Sonoran Desert and the Monte Desert of Northwestern Argentina

The Monte Desert of Argentina and the Sonoran Desert of North America are very similar in most aspects of their physical environments. The origins and the degree of affinity of thefaunas of three classes of vertebrates in the two deserts are discussed. Heterotherms show high endemism, with 72 0 % of the Monte species either endemic to the Monte or with Monte-Chaco distribution and with 61-4% of the Sonoran Desert heterotherms endemic to deserts of the southwest. Mammals show low endemism and theirdesertinhabitantsgenerallybelongto wide-ranging species.