Biogeography articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents an approach to deal with spatial, temporal and phylogenetic non-independence in large-scale analyses of biodiversity change, improving trend estimation and inference across scales.

    • T. F. Johnson
    • , A. P. Beckerman
    •  & R. P. Freckleton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of the latitudinal diversity gradient on plants on oceanic islands is weakened by classical abiotic physical drivers of island biogeography and, to a greater extent, by mutualism with other species.

    • Camille S. Delavaux
    • , Thomas W. Crowther
    •  & Evan M. Gora

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The prevalence of annual plants worldwide rises in response to hot-dry summers, year-to-year variations, and disturbances, potentially impacting the future of ecosystem services provided by perennials.

    • Tyler Poppenwimer
    • , Itay Mayrose
    •  & Niv DeMalach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nearly 90% of global variation in species richness of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles is shown to be explained by the joint effects of climate and the geographic structure (area and isolation) of climate.

    • Marco Túlio P. Coelho
    • , Elisa Barreto
    •  & Catherine H. Graham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

    • Camille S. Delavaux
    • , Thomas W. Crowther
    •  & Daniel S. Maynard

  • Article |

    Analysis of Triton, a high-resolution dataset documenting the macroperforate planktonic foraminifera fossil record, reveals a global climate-linked equatorward shift of ecological and morphological community equitability over the past 8 million years.

    • Adam Woodhouse
    • , Anshuman Swain
    •  & Christopher M. Lowery

  • Article |

    A global field survey that analyses samples of soil from all continents identifies hotspots for soil nature conservation, and shows that different ecological dimensions of soil are associated with different priority areas for conservation.

    • Carlos A. Guerra
    • , Miguel Berdugo
    •  & Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo

  • Article |

    Changes in climate and land use will lead to species aggregating in new combinations at high elevations, in biodiversity hotspots and in areas of high human population density in Asia and Africa, driving the cross-species transmission of animal-associated viruses.

    • Colin J. Carlson
    • , Gregory F. Albery
    •  & Shweta Bansal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Three key axes of variation of ecosystem functional changes and their underlying causes are identified from a dataset of surface gas exchange measurements across major terrestrial biomes and climate zones.

    • Mirco Migliavacca
    • , Talie Musavi
    •  & Markus Reichstein

  • Article |

    Remote-sensing estimates of fires and the estimated geographic ranges of thousands of plant and vertebrate species in the Amazon Basin reveal that fires have impacted the ranges of 77–85% of threatened species over the past two decades.

    • Xiao Feng
    • , Cory Merow
    •  & Brian J. Enquist

  • Article |

    A tight coupling between metabolic rate, efficacy of oxygen supply and the temperature sensitivities of marine animals predicts a variety of geographical niches that better aligns with the distributions of species than models of either temperature or oxygen alone.

    • Curtis Deutsch
    • , Justin L. Penn
    •  & Brad Seibel

  • Article |

    A catalogue of the vascular flora of New Guinea indicates that this island is the most floristically diverse in the world, and that 68% of the species identified are endemic to New Guinea.

    • Rodrigo Cámara-Leret
    • , David G. Frodin
    •  & Peter C. van Welzen

  • Article |

    Using a global molecular phylogenetic dataset of birds on islands, the sensitivity of island-specific rates of colonization, speciation and extinction to island features (area and isolation) is estimated.

    • Luis Valente
    • , Albert B. Phillimore
    •  & Rampal S. Etienne

  • Article |

    High-resolution spatial maps of the global abundance of soil nematodes and the composition of functional groups show that soil nematodes are found in higher abundances in sub-Arctic regions, than in temperate or tropical regions.

    • Johan van den Hoogen
    • , Stefan Geisen
    •  & Thomas Ward Crowther

  • Letter |

    Comparisons across terrestrial and marine ectotherms reveal that marine species experience temperatures closer to their upper thermal limits, and that local extirpations related to warming are more common in the ocean.

    • Malin L. Pinsky
    • , Anne Maria Eikeset
    •  & Jennifer M. Sunday

  • Article |

    Analyses of the relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits across the tundra and over time show that community height increased with warming across all sites, whereas other traits lagged behind predicted rates of change.

    • Anne D. Bjorkman
    • , Isla H. Myers-Smith
    •  & Evan Weiher

  • Letter |

    A global modelling approach shows that in response to rises in global sea level, gains of up to 60% in coastal wetland areas are possible, if appropriate coastal management solutions are developed to help support wetland resilience.

    • Mark Schuerch
    • , Tom Spencer
    •  & Sally Brown

  • Letter |

    Metagenomic, chemical and biomass analyses of topsoil samples from around the world reveal spatial and environmental trends in microbial community composition and genetic diversity.

    • Mohammad Bahram
    • , Falk Hildebrand
    •  & Peer Bork

  • Letter |

    Fish and invertebrate communities transformed across the span of the Great Barrier Reef following the 2016 bleaching event due to a decline in coral-feeding fishes resulting from coral loss, and because of different regional responses of key trophic groups to the direct effect of temperature.

    • Rick D. Stuart-Smith
    • , Christopher J. Brown
    •  & Graham J. Edgar

  • Letter |

    Analyses of a global dataset of plant root traits identify an ancestral conservative strategy based on thick roots and mycorrhizal symbiosis, and an evolutionarily more-recent opportunistic strategy of thin roots that efficiently use photosynthetic carbon for soil exploration.

    • Zeqing Ma
    • , Dali Guo
    •  & Lars O. Hedin

  • Letter |

    Satellite data and modelling reveal that tropical forest fragments have similar size distributions across continents, and that forest fragmentation is close to a critical point, beyond which fragment numbers will strongly increase.

    • Franziska Taubert
    • , Rico Fischer
    •  & Andreas Huth

  • Letter |

    On marine islands, most species are good dispersers and most niches are filled by immigration with little adaptive radiation; speciation increases over time, associated with the arrival of weak dispersers that randomly establish isolated populations.

    • Hudson T. Pinheiro
    • , Giacomo Bernardi
    •  & Luiz A. Rocha

  • Letter |

    Analysis of exceptionally preserved fossils of the Cambrian hyolith Haplophrentis leads to a proposed evolutionary relationship with Lophophorata, the group containing brachiopods and phoronids, on the basis of a newly described tentacular feeding apparatus.

    • Joseph Moysiuk
    • , Martin R. Smith
    •  & Jean-Bernard Caron

  • Letter |

    Depth-dependent patterns in ocean species diversity can be explained by latitudinal variations in energy availability, with shelf and upper-slope diversity increasing with thermal energy availability, and deep-sea diversity increasing with chemical energy availability; the discovery of these distinct patterns could help to guide the conservation and management of these remote ecosystems.

    • Skipton N. C. Woolley
    • , Derek P. Tittensor
    •  & Timothy D. O’Hara

  • Letter |

    Relatively rapid changes in island area, isolation and connectivity observed since the Last Glacial Maximum have had measurable effects on present-day biodiversity, with formerly larger and less well connected islands having a greater number of endemic species.

    • Patrick Weigelt
    • , Manuel Jonas Steinbauer
    •  & Holger Kreft

  • Letter |

    Using satellite data and a novel analytical approach, a new index of the sensitivity of vegetation to climate variability is developed, revealing areas of high sensitivity that include tundra, boreal forest, tropical forest and temperate grasslands.

    • Alistair W. R. Seddon
    • , Marc Macias-Fauria
    •  & Kathy J. Willis

  • Letter |

    New excavations in Sulawesi, where in situ stone artefacts associated with fossil remains of megafauna have been recovered from stratified deposits between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, suggest that Sulawesi was host to a long-established population of archaic hominins.

    • Gerrit D. van den Bergh
    • , Bo Li
    •  & Michael J. Morwood

  • Article |

    How marine communities will respond to climate change depends on the thermal sensitivities of existing communities; existing reef communities do not show a perfect fit between current temperatures and the thermal niches of the species within them and this thermal bias is a major contributor to projected local species loss.

    • Rick D. Stuart-Smith
    • , Graham J. Edgar
    •  & Amanda E. Bates

  • Perspective |

    Formal criteria must be met to define a new human-driven epoch; the geological evidence appears to do so, with 1610 and 1964 both likely to satisfy the requirements for the start of the Anthropocene.

    • Simon L. Lewis
    •  & Mark A. Maslin

  • Letter |

    A contemporary test of the theory of island biogeography, in which species richness is determined by an island’s area and isolation, shows that geographic area is still a good positive predictor of species richness, but that geographic isolation as a negative predictor has been replaced by economic isolation.

    • Matthew R. Helmus
    • , D. Luke Mahler
    •  & Jonathan B. Losos

  • Letter |

    Global maps constructed using climate-change velocities to derive spatial trajectories for climatic niches between 1960 and 2100 show past and future shifts in ecological climate niches; properties of these trajectories are used to infer changes in species distributions, and thus identify areas that will act as climate sources and sinks, and geographical barriers to species migrations.

    • Michael T. Burrows
    • , David S. Schoeman
    •  & Elvira S. Poloczanska

  • Letter |

    This large comparative phylogenetic study across angiosperms shows that species that are herbaceous or have small conduits evolved these traits before colonizing environments with freezing conditions, whereas deciduous species changed their climate niche before becoming deciduous.

    • Amy E. Zanne
    • , David C. Tank
    •  & Jeremy M. Beaulieu

  • Books & Arts |

    T. C. Boyle's latest novel probes the convoluted impacts of species eradication programmes, finds Emma Marris.

    • Emma Marris

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