Theoretical ecology articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    A numerical analysis of mutualistic interactions between species shows that indirect effects from species they do not interact with directly are the biggest source of variation and cause the largest decreases to species fitness.

    • Leandro G. Cosmo
    • , Ana Paula A. Assis
    •  & Paulo R. Guimarães Jr

  • Article |

    Ecological models of species with diverse life history traits show that complementary combinations of life history strategy contribute, together with fitness and niche differences, to the maintenance of biodiversity.

    • Kenneth Jops
    •  & James P. O’Dwyer

  • 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 |

    Empirically validated mathematical models show that a combination of intraspecific competition between subterranean social-insect colonies and scale-dependent feedbacks between plants can explain the spatially periodic vegetation patterns observed in many landscapes, such as the Namib Desert ‘fairy circles’.

    • Corina E. Tarnita
    • , Juan A. Bonachela
    •  & Robert M. Pringle

  • Letter |

    The Trivers–Willard theory proposing that maternal condition influences offspring sex ratio is extended by analysing how differences in mortality rates, age‐specific reproduction and life history tactics between males and females may affect adaptive offspring sex ratio adjustment in two systems.

    • Susanne Schindler
    • , Jean‐Michel Gaillard
    •  & Tim Coulson

  • Letter |

    A modelling study of the mechanisms of extinction within ecological networks reveals how even a small reduction in the population size of a species may lead to the loss of its ecological functionality—that is, to its functional extinction—by causing extinction of other organisms in the food web, often only indirectly connected to the focal species, revealing the value of conservation strategies that target a broader ecological network.

    • Torbjörn Säterberg
    • , Stefan Sellman
    •  & Bo Ebenman

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Samraat Pawar
    • , Anthony I. Dell
    •  & Van M. Savage

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Daniel G. Boyce
    • , Marlon R. Lewis
    •  & Boris Worm

  • News & Views |

    The aquatic plant Salvinia molesta is a widespread pest of waterways in the tropics and subtropics. A study of its control by a weevil in Australian billabongs sets a new standard in ecological time-series analysis. See Letter p.86

    • Lewi Stone

  • Editorial |

    Ecological models can be used to guide economic policy — but should they?

  • News & Views |

    Lévy flights are a theoretical construct that has attracted wide interdisciplinary interest. Empirical evidence shows that the principle applies to the foraging of marine predators.

    • Gandhimohan M. Viswanathan

  • Letter |

    It has been thought that the basal metabolic rate of organisms increases as body mass is raised to some power, p. But the value of p has proved controversial, with both 2/3 and 3/4 being proposed. It is found here that the relationship between mass and metabolic rate does not follow a pure power law at all, and requires a quadratic term to account for curvature. Taking temperature and phylogeny into account, this explains why different data sets have produced different exponents when a power law has been fitted.

    • Tom Kolokotrones
    • , Van Savage
    •  & Walter Fontana

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