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The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (MPB-32) (Monographs in Population Biology (32))
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About The Unified Neutral Theory Of Biodiversity And
Product Description Despite its supreme importance and the threat of its global crash, biodiversity remains poorly understood both empirically and theoretically. This ambitious book presents a new, general neutral theory to explain the origin, maintenance, and loss of biodiversity in a biogeographic context. Until now biogeography (the study of the geographic distribution of species) and biodiversity (the study of species richness and relative species abundance) have had largely disjunct intellectual histories. In this book, Stephen Hubbell develops a formal mathematical theory that unifies these two fields. When a speciation process is incorporated into Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson's now classical theory of island biogeography, the generalized theory predicts the existence of a universal, dimensionless biodiversity number. In the theory, this fundamental biodiversity number, together with the migration or dispersal rate, completely determines the steady-state distribution of species richness and relative species abundance on local to large geographic spatial scales and short-term to evolutionary time scales. Although neutral, Hubbell's theory is nevertheless able to generate many nonobvious, testable, and remarkably accurate quantitative predictions about biodiversity and biogeography. In many ways Hubbell's theory is the ecological analog to the neutral theory of genetic drift in genetics. The unified neutral theory of biogeography and biodiversity should stimulate research in new theoretical and empirical directions by ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and biogeographers. Review "A rich book about an idea that has the power to re-produce generic patterns and that will be in the back of your mind when you, again, try to make sense of the plethora of articles on species diversity, abundance and distribution. . . . Once you start reading it, you will find it not a page too long." ---Carsten F. Dormann, Basic Applied Ecology "Highly innovative and insightful. . . . Ideas are conveyed clearly and the addition of summary points at the end of each chapter facilitates assimilation."" ---Richard T. Busing, Ecological Engineering "[This] is a rich book about an idea that has the power to re-produce generic patterns and that will be in the back of your mind when you, again, try to make sense of the plethora of articles on species diversity, abundance and distribution." ---Carsten F. Dormann, Basic and Applied Ecology "This is an important contribution to the development of a much sought-after explanation of pattern and process in an increasingly threatened global resource." ---Michael E. Meadows, Environmental Conservation "Hubbell has produced a book for all those who think about how communities are put together, even the not so mathematically minded. . . . [It] is sure to influence how community ecology is done for years to come." ---Sandra Knapp, Biological Conservation "Hubbell's book is a very exciting one, deeply original, based on extensive field data, and convincing in its 'simple' explanations of many broad-scale patterns in biodiversity and biogeography. It will probably cause controversies, but primarily stimulate further research." ---Gottfried Jetschke, Ecology Review "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 From the Back Cover "This provocative and enlightening work, deeply original and supp
