Neutral Ecology and Beyond

This article summarizes the history, formulation and results of neutral theory in ecology. The motivation for the development of neutral theory is outlined, including its foundations in the theories of molecular evolution and island biogeography. We provide an explicit mathematical formulation of Hubbell's original neutral model, and outline the predictions of this model and subsequent refinements and extensions, including recent efforts to test neutral predictions with temporal data. Neutral models have inspired the development of non-neutral models sharing some, but not all, of the assumptions of neutral theory, and some of these models are discussed. We summarize where neutral theory now sits in the broader field of theoretical ecology.