A numerical perspective on Nature authors.

Ian Hutton has spent the past 25 years researching and recording the fauna and flora of Lord Howe Island, Australia. His roles range from curator for the local museum and organizer of weeding ecotours to surveyor of seabirds.

Hutton often teams up with visiting scientists to study individual plant or animal species on the island. Lord Howe may be isolated, but Hutton says that the Internet and e-mail have made research, communications and collaboration with scientists overseas much easier. He has a long-standing association with researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in Britain — their most recent collaboration provides evidence for sympatric speciation (divergence without geographical isolation) in two species of palm endemic to Lord Howe (see page 210).

101 manuscripts have been submitted to Nature from Australia this year (<3% of all manuscripts).

46 authors in Australia have contributed to original research published in Nature this year (<2% of published authors).

4,183 downloads have been made of Hutton and colleagues' paper on speciation in palms since its advance online publication on 8 February 2006.

13,000 hours have been spent weeding as part of Hutton's ecotours.