Understanding the mechanisms controlling community diversity, functions, succession, and
biogeography is a central, but poorly understood, topic in ecology, particularly in microbial …

A decade has now passed since Hubbell published The Unified Neutral Theory of
Biodiversity and Biogeography. Neutral theory highlights the importance of dispersal …

Species abundance distributions (SADs) follow one of ecology's oldest and most universal
laws–every community shows a hollow curve or hyperbolic shape on a histogram with many …

This pioneering graduate textbook provides readers with the concepts and practical tools
required to understand the maximum entropy principle, and apply it to an understanding of …

Ecological neutral theory has elicited strong opinions in recent years. Here, we review these
opinions and strip away some unfortunate problems with semantics to reveal three major …

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 627–642 Abstract A unified theory in science is a theory that
shows a common underlying set of rules that regulate processes previously thought to be …

The simplest theories often have much merit and many limitations, and, in this vein, the
value of neutral theory (NT) of biodiversity has been the subject of much debate over the …

A formidable many-body problem in ecology is to understand the complex of factors
controlling patterns of relative species abundance (RSA) in communities of interacting …

Recently, there has been a vigorous interest in community ecology about the structure of
mutualistic networks and its importance for species persistence and coevolution. However …

Published in 2001, The U nified N eutral T heory of B iodiversity and B iogeography (UNTB)
emphasizes the importance of stochastic processes in ecological community structure, and …