Biogeography articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    There is currently no consensus on how best to identify and delimit biogeographical regions. Here the authors develop a network-based approach incorporating complex presence–absence patterns that can successfully identify commonly recognized biogeographical regions, and apply it to two large-scale data sets of plants and amphibians.

    • Daril A. Vilhena
    •  & Alexandre Antonelli

  • Article |

    The effects of forests on water yield are uncertain, with some studies indicating that increased evapotranspiration reduces water yield and other showing that forests increase it. Here, the authors analyse published data to settle this debate, finding that afforestation has a positive effect on water yield.

    • Guoyi Zhou
    • , Xiaohua Wei
    •  & Yongxian Su

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current methods to identify the geographical origin of humans based on DNA data present limited accuracy. Here, the authors develop a new algorithm, the Genographic Population Structure (GPS), and demonstrate its ability to place worldwide individuals within their country or, in some cases, village of origin.

    • Eran Elhaik
    • , Tatiana Tatarinova
    •  & Janet S. Ziegle

  • Article |

    Hyposmocomais a diverse lineage of moths that occur across the entire Hawaiian Archipelago. Here, Haineset al. show that Hyposmocomais about 15 million years old, much older than the most recent islands, and that these moths have dispersed from remote Northwestern islands in many independent events.

    • William P. Haines
    • , Patrick Schmitz
    •  & Daniel Rubinoff

  • Article |

    In the Late Triassic, southern Gondwanan flora is thought to have been dominated by endemic species mainly restricted to eastern areas with some mixing with northern species. In this study, pollen and spore assemblages from Argentina reveal the presence of these mixed flora in the westernmost Gondwana as well.

    • Silvia N Césari
    •  & Carina E Colombi

  • Article |

    Differentiated genomic regions among conserved loci, known as speciation islands, are believed to form because of reduced inter-population gene flow near loci under divergent selection. Renault et al.show that reduced recombination, rather than slower gene flow, accounts for the formation of these regions in sunflowers.

    • S. Renaut
    • , C. J. Grassa
    •  & L. H. Rieseberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Camels originated in North America during the Eocene period ~45 million years ago. This study reports evidence of a High Arctic camel from Ellesmere Island, which extends the range of North American camels northward by ~1,200 km to a lineage of giant camels that were well established in a forested Arctic.

    • Natalia Rybczynski
    • , John C. Gosse
    •  & Mike Buckley

  • Article |

    Empirical data suggest that species abundance distributions can have multiple modes, which is not predicted by existing theories. This study shows that the multimodal pattern is consistent with emergent neutrality, suggesting this theory could have a role in shaping natural communities.

    • Remi Vergnon
    • , Egbert H. van Nes
    •  & Marten Scheffer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microorganisms are abundant in many environments and understanding their dispersal between ecosystems is important for ecology and conservation. These authors demonstrate that cyanobacterial populations are specific to hot or cold deserts and that gene flow between different populations does not occur.

    • Justin Bahl
    • , Maggie C. Y. Lau
    •  & Stephen B. Pointing

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