Meeting Abstract
In the northern extreme of the Great Basin desert scrub, climate variation is exemplified not only by the contrasts of La Nina and El Nino years, but also by comparing temperature and rainfall differences among consecutive years, across a fifteen-year span. As an ecosystem strongly limited by water resources, the among-year contrasts in temperature and rainfall in the desert scrub, along with aridity indices and evapotranspiration indices, can be used to predict contrasting outcomes among years in productivity at multiple trophic levels: 1) NDVI as a proxy of primary productivity, 2) abundances of arthropods (the primary and secondary consumers), 3) specific prey of lizards, 4) feeding rates by lizards (the secondary and tertiary consumers), 5) lizard body condition and 6) reproductive output of lizards, with special focus on the Long-nosed Leopard Lizard, Gambelia wislizenii, which eats vertebrates and arthropods. Trophic consequences of climate variation among years do correlate with indices, with the caveat that indices only approximate the dynamic timing and levels of precipitation and temperature.
