How Many First-Authored Papers in "Leading" Journals Does One Need to be Hired as an Assistant Professor?

This is in ecology, but we can think of analogous exercises for mathematics and physics (including also with numbers of citations of papers at the time of being hired).

How many first-authored papers in “leading” journals does an ecologist need to be hired as a tenure-track asst. prof at an R1 university? Not nearly as many as most ecologists think. https://t.co/qpfozljVD0 pic.twitter.com/VrcfEbTjdh

— Dynamic Ecology (@DynamicEcology) October 2, 2018

FYI: I have seen several things on this blog over the years that are relevant far beyond their core ecology audience, so it's worth a look beyond this post.

Update: It's also not required to have lots of citations to get a top faculty job. It would be good to see a distribution of what people have had in practice. (The number of citations listed by Google Scholar for me for 2006 is 53.)