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Establishment Of Larrea Tridentata At The Northern Edge Of The Modern Mojave Desert: Insights From Neotoma Paleomiddens, Clare Steinberg
Establishment Of Larrea Tridentata At The Northern Edge Of The Modern Mojave Desert: Insights From Neotoma Paleomiddens, Clare Steinberg
Biology ETDs
Shifting climates affect the composition of biological communities. If environmental conditions change sufficiently, new species can invade, leading to large-scale community turnover. Understanding how and why such shifts occur is crucial in this era of anthropogenic global change. Paleontological studies provide a valuable long-term perspective of the dynamics of community turnover. Here, we examine changes in the plant community over the past 34 thousand years in what is now the northern Mojave Desert. This time period includes the last glacial maximum as well as numerous smaller climatic fluctuations in the Holocene and the end of the Pleistocene. We quantified plant …