LITERARY SPECIMEN

This arid hot desert site is located near the Montana Mine in an upland bajada site in the Paradise Range. The soil at the site is a gravelly silt loam with a surface covering of gravels and coarse sands. It is low in organic matter (0.7% OM), neutral (pH 7.12), and low in electrical conductivity (0.5 mS.cm-1). It has been characterized thoroughly in another paper (Johansen et al. 2001) under the site name PR1. This typical Mojave Desert site is dominated by the following shrubs: Ambrosia dumosa, Atriplex canescens, Larrea tridentata, Krameria erecta, Lycium andersonii, Mirabilis bigelowii, Haplopappus cooperi, Xylorhiza tortifolia, Encelia actonii, and Yucca brevifolia. The soil has a very patchy microbiotic crust cover, and the samples used for isolation of strains were essentially uncrusted.