. Occasional papers of the California Academy of Sciences. Figure 29A. Silk webs in a leaf cluster. Such leaves maybe dead or alive on low understory vegetation. This habitatis chiefly used by species of Enveja Navas occurring in cer-tain portions of Africas Brachystegia woodlands. By oc-cupation of leaf clusters, females and their early brood es-cape excessive soil moisture in the rainy season. With rain-fall decline, the embiids move down into leaf litter and, fi-nally, into soil cracks to escape dry conditions and Figure 29B. OpcncJ Lm^ju nc^i revealing female guard-ing eggs. Unlike
. Occasional papers of the California Academy of Sciences. Figure 29A. Silk webs in a leaf cluster. Such leaves maybe dead or alive on low understory vegetation. This habitatis chiefly used by species of Enveja Navas occurring in cer-tain portions of Africas Brachystegia woodlands. By oc-cupation of leaf clusters, females and their early brood es-cape excessive soil moisture in the rainy season. With rain-fall decline, the embiids move down into leaf litter and, fi-nally, into soil cracks to escape dry conditions and Figure 29B. OpcncJ Lm^ju nc^i revealing female guard-ing eggs. Unlike those of most embiids, the eggs are looselycovered with fibrous debris—perhaps her fragmented fe-cal pellets. to reach leaf litter food. Fragments may be carrieddown into subterranean galleries to serve as food pro-visions. With a return to complete aridity, temporarysurface galleries may soon weather away and thus noevidence of embiid occurrence may remain. An ex-ceptional species in western Afghanistan extends gal-leries upward into low shrubs {Artemesia) to collectleaf fragments. 5. DESERT AREAS. An embiid fauna is consid-erably reduced by extreme aridity and may be con-fined to oases, drainage lines and foggy coastaldeserts. A lack of significant precipitation almostcompletely eliminates occupation of all above-groundhabitats. However, palm trees, such as the date palm,provide safe retreat in leaf bases of the trunk whichtend to collect abundant embiid food in the form ofleaf debris. In the Nile Delta two spec
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectscience, bookyear1890
