Journal
THEORETICAL POPULATION BIOLOGY
Volume 66, Issue 3, Pages 199-203Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2004.06.003
Keywords
dispersal; ecological community; ecological drift; deleterious mutation; neutral community; spatial ecology; species coexistence
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The unified neutral theory of biodiversity provides a very simple and counterintuitive explanation of species diversity patterns. By specifying speciation, community size and dispersal, and completely ignoring differences among individual organisms and species, it generates biodiversity patterns that remarkably resemble natural ones. Here I show that adding even slight differences among organisms generates very different patterns and predictions. In large communities with widespread dispersal, heritable differences in viability among individual organisms lead to biodiversity patterns characterised by the overdominance of a single species comprising organisms with relatively high fitness. In communities with local dispersal, the same differences produce rapid community extinction. I conclude that the unified neutral theory is not robust to slight deviations from its most controversial assumption. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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