Biogeography articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    The major nutrients nitrate and phosphate have one of the strongest correlations in the sea, with a slope similar to the average nitrogen to phosphorus content of plankton biomass (16:1). Why this global relationship exists, despite the wide range of nitrogen to phosphorus ratios at the organism level, is unknown. Here, an ocean circulation model and observed nutrient distributions have been used to show that the covariation of dissolved nitrate and phosphate is maintained by ocean circulation.

    • Thomas S. Weber
    •  & Curtis Deutsch

  • News & Views |

    The discovery in Europe of fossils of a small horned dinosaur, a member of a group previously known only from Asia and North America, will prompt a rethink of biogeography at that time in the past.

    • Xing Xu

  • News & Views |

    How, when and from where did Madagascar's unique mammalian fauna originate? The idea that the ancestors of that fauna rafted from Africa finds support in innovative simulations of ancient ocean currents.

    • David W. Krause

  • Letter |

    Madagascar has a striking and peculiar fauna. It has been proposed that the ancestors of Madagascar's present-day mammal stock rafted there from Africa, but the validity of this hypothesis is questioned. Using palaeogeographic reconstructions and palaeo-oceanographic modelling, surface currents during the Palaeogene period are now shown to have been capable of transporting the animals to the island, as required by the hypothesis.

    • Jason R. Ali
    •  & Matthew Huber

  • News Feature |

    An annual excursion to an exclusive Caribbean island has yielded an impressive body of ecological fieldwork. Just don't call it a holiday, says Mark Schrope.

    • Mark Schrope

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