depauperate

An urchin barren is an example of a depauperate ecosystem.

"I never was happy about the barrenness Smacked of a depauperate ecology.

The native land fauna is depauperate, with birds predominating and mammals absent.

A depauperate ecosystem is one which is lacking in numbers or variety of species, often because it lacks enough stored chemical elements required for life.

Thus, depauperate ecosystems often cannot support rapid growth of flora and fauna, high biomass density, and high biological diversity.

Ericoid mycorrhizal fungi, which are predominately ascomycetes, enable their host plant to obtain nutrients in these depauperate soils.

Other factors which are believed to contribute to the depauperate fauna of tropical hardwood hammocks include habitat disturbance by humans and the "peninsula effect" (Snyder et al. 1990).

In the depauperate heathlands of Europe bird species tend to be more characteristic of the community and include Montagu's Harrier, and the Tree Pipit.

Compared to the tropical rainforests of Queensland and New South Wales, this is a floristically depauperate forest, representing as it does the southern limit of this flora.

Because of early colonial settlement and intensive land use, by the time Henry Thoreau saw Cape Cod during his four visits over 1849 to 1857, its vegetation was depauperate and trees were scarce.

Introductions or translocations of species have also been proposed in the interest of genetic conservation, which advocates the introduction of new individuals into genetically depauperate populations of endangered or threatened species.

In general, the findings of the 1978 study indicated a rich and varied fauna and flora associated with the high-relief solid substrate of the island which differs substantially from the more depauperate natural bottom habitats in the area.

That might help, or it might not, but the very suggestion reminds us that Yellowstone's grizzly population is constrained, marginal, genetically depauperate and threatened (yes, "threatened" is the right word) by various combinations of possible and inevitable trouble.

Ullman (2000) disagreed with their conclusions regarding the Arabian enclaves, however, arguing that their depauperate avifauna, when compared to species-rich areas in northeast Africa, justified inclusion of the whole of Arabia in the Western Palearctic.

The islets of the Cargados Carajos Shoals, which have a very depauperate terrestrial biota owing to being so low-lying and swamped during cyclones, are bound to the east by an extensive arc of fringing reef, which accounts for 30% of the reefs of the Mascarene Islands.