The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography

Despite its importance and the threat of its global crash, biodiversity is poorly understood both empirically and theoretically. This work presents a neutral, general theory to explain the origin, maintenance and loss of biodiversity in a biogeographical context.

This provocative and enlightening work, deeply original and supported by some of the most extensive field research ever conducted in biology, will be regarded as one of the most important contributions to ecology and biogeography of the past half century. -- Edward O. Wilson, author of "Biodiversity" This book should be a true landmark, a revolutionary and compelling treatment that can do for community ecology what neutrality theory did for molecular and population genetics. Building on the conceptual foundations of island biogeography, Hubbell erects a grand null hypothesis establishing, in this case, a novel conceptual framework for virtually all further attempts at interpetating the composite distributions and abundances of species, in any environment and at any trophic level. I hope that this work will be discussed and embraced by the ecological community to the extent that it clearly merits. -- John Avise, University of Georgia This book presents a new theory that seeks to unify the two approaches of population biology: biodiversity and biogeography. I expect that it will immediately be considered essential reading by biogeographers and ecologists... Its review of the literature is extensive and valuable. The author's writing style is graceful and reads well. -- Jared Diamond, author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" This book is important and inspiring. It will surely stimulate renewed and long overdue interest in broad-scale patterns of species distributions and abundances--the core of community ecology. -- Mark A. McPeek, Dartmouth College

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