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Article: Rat removal converts shrublands to grass. (Arizona)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- December 22, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Rat removal converts shrublands to grass
James H. Brown wasn't looking for greener pastures, but he found them anyway. When he and his colleagues fenced off sections of the Chihuahuan Desert in 1977, excluding certain rat species from small plots of shrubland in southeastern Arizona, they had but a single goal: assessing the rats' ability to compete with native ants for the area's supply of large plant seeds.
But 13 years after initiating the desert study and four years after his original associates published their last report on the project, Brown has doggedly stayed on the job to record a remarkable transformation among eight of 24 small plots of land ...