Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ans gold necklaces as a reward, the padre “in my very presence” took the
necklaces for himself and gave them in return only a few yards of cloth.
As Isabela recounts, she was outraged, but being too weak to walk, she de-
manded to be put back in the canoe and taken to the next settlement at
Loreto. A Portuguese ship intercepted the canoe and took Isabela the nearly
2000 miles to French Guiana, where she was at last reunited with Jean
Godin after more than twenty years. They remained there for two years
longer, then with her father and the servant Joachim, they returned to La
Rochelle, France. At the dock Charles-Marie de La Condamine was waiting
to greet them after Isabela's heroic sojourn and Jean Godin's thirty-eight
years in Amazonia.
The Atacama Desert
The 300-km-long coastal region between southern Peru (5°S) and Chile
(30°S) is hyperarid except in El Niño years, when much of it becomes a
lake-dotted fl owerland. MAP is 2-15 mm in southern Peru, less than 1 mm
in northern Chile, and reaches 100 mm to the south. Fogs provide some
moisture along the coast. MAP at places of 5 to 45 mm, and 400 to 1500 mm
elsewhere, reach the higher values only during strong El Niños. Many parts
of the Peruvian and Atacama deserts are nearly devoid of plants; and in
other places, it is such a barren rocky landscape of exposed lava and shifting
sand dunes that it was used to test the robot Nomad used as a prototype for
the lunar rover. The dry soils were also used to establish protocols for de-
tecting the possible biological content of Martian samples from the Viking
missions. Personnel of the BBC, fi lming at Paranal Observatory, noted that
in fi ve years it had rained three times. The Atacama Desert extends about
100 km inland; and at the upper elevations, in the region of the southern
Altiplano, there are mineral deposits of nitrate, gypsum, and other evapo-
rites documenting that dry conditions periodically extended far into the
geologic past. In central Chile from about 30°S to 36°S, there is a transition
zone of Mediterranean-type vegetation and climate (winter-wet, April to
September; MAP 200-700 mm) between the Atacama Desert to the north
and temperate forests to the south (Armesto et al. 2007).
When environments change, ecosystems that are novel in extent and
composition may come about through several alterations in the biota:
(1) a gradual change (evolution) in the ecological requirements of the spe-
cies, although this is probably rare; (2) an expression of already existing
broader ecological amplitudes as conditions change or barriers are removed;
(3) immigration; and (4) the almost universal presence of preadapted indi-
