Nonvascular photoautotrophs (NVP), including bryophytes, lichens, terrestrial algae, and
cyanobacteria, are increasingly recognized as being essential to ecosystem functioning in …

Interest in understanding the role of biocrusts as ecosystem engineers in drylands has
substantially increased during the past two decades. Mosses are a major component of …

Biological soil crusts (BSCs), known as ecological engineers, play an important role in soil
organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in dryland ecosystems. Although numerous individual …

The desert, which covers around one-third of Earth's continental surface, is defined as the
harshest terrestrial environment and comprises a highly extensive biome of the terrestrial …

A significant fraction of Earth's ecosystems undergoes periodic wet‐dry alternating
transitional states. These globally distributed water‐driven transitional ecosystems, such as …

Drylands are important reservoirs of soil phosphorus (P) at the global scale, although large
uncertainties remain regarding how climate change will affect P cycling in these ecosystems …

Environmental filtering and competition are two fundamental processes that shape plant
community assembly in terms of functional composition, that is, the distribution of trait values …

Background and aims Biocrusts are major contributors to dryland nutrient cycling by
regulating C, N and P inputs and fluxes. However, our understanding about how the …

Biocrusts are an essential soil surface cover at drylands where ecosystems are especially
fragile to soil degradation processes due to climatic peculiarities. In the present work,(micro) …

Despite recent advances in the ecology of lichens from a community perspective, much
remains unknown at the species level particularly in arid regions. In this context, the current …