The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography is a theory and the title of a monograph by ecologist Stephen Hubbell.
The theory aims to explain the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities, although like other neutral theories of ecology, Hubbell's theory assumes that the differences between members of an ecological community of trophically similar species are "neutral," or irrelevant to their success.
Despite contradicting the principle of "survival of the fittest", the theory has been applied successfully to many groups of species, including forest tree species, bacterial populations, moths, British birds, and vascular plants.
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