FIG 4.

Boxplots showing aerial chl a contents at the end of the greenhouse incubation period for the second set of experiments. Boxes denote lower and upper quartiles (with median values depicted as black solid lines), and whiskers denote lower and upper extremes (n = 5). Blue lines indicate the chl a content of field biocrust samples used as inoculum (INOC), and red lines indicate the initial chl a content in the inoculated soils (INIT) (color solid lines indicate mean, and color dashed lines indicate standard deviations of n = 5) (FB, Fort Bliss; J, Jornada; N, Nosecone; BB, Burr Buttercup).