LONG-TERM RESEARCH IN BOSQUE FRAY JORGE NATIONAL PARK 69 REVISTA CHILENA DE HISTORIA NATURAL Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 83: 69-98, 2010 © Sociedad de Biología de Chile SPECIAL FEATURE: LONG-TERM RESEARCH Long-term research in Bosque Fray Jorge National Park: Twenty years studying the role of biotic and abiotic factors in a Chilean semiarid scrubland Investigación de largo plazo en el Parque Nacional Bosque Fray Jorge: Veinte años estudiando el rol de los factores bióticos y abióticos en un matorral chileno semiárido JULIO R. GUTIÉRREZ1, 2, *, PETER L. MESERVE3, DOUGLAS A. KELT4, ANDREW ENGILIS JR.4, M. ANDREA PREVITALI3, W. BRYAN MILSTEAD3, 5 & FABIAN M. JAKSIC6 1 Departamento de Biología and Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas, Universidad de La Serena, Chile 2 Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad, Chile 3 Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA 4 Department of Wildlife, Fish, & Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA 5 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 27 Tarzwell Drive Narragansett, RI 0288, USA 6 Center for Advanced Studies in Ecology & Biodiversity (CASEB), Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile *Corresponding author:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Since 1989, we have conducted a large-scale ecological experiment in semiarid thorn scrub of a national park in north-central Chile. Initially, we focused on the role of biotic interactions including predation, interspecific competition, and herbivory in small mammal and plant components of the community. We utilized a reductionist approach with replicated 0.56 ha fenced grids that selectively excluded vertebrate predators and/or larger small mammal herbivores such as the degu, Octodon degus.