No need for niches? Neutral theory explains biodiversity when species are identical. Niche differences, or the unique ways that each species “makes its living” in nature, are the classical explanation ...

For more than half a century, many biologists have leaned on the neutral theory of molecular evolution to explain how DNA and proteins change over time. The idea grew from early work in the 1960s, ...

More than four decades ago, field ecologists set out to quantify the diversity of trees on a forested plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, one of the most intensively studied tracts of tropical ...

Nevertheless, neutral theory was rapidly adopted by many biologists. This was partly a result of Kimura’s reputation as one of the most prominent theoretical population geneticists of the time, but it ...

More than four decades ago, field ecologists set out to quantify the diversity of trees on a forested plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, one of the most intensively studied tracts of forest on ...

Research shows the relationship between a species' age and its risk of going extinct could be accurately predicted by an ecological model called the 'neutral theory of biodiversity.' New research from ...

ANN ARBOR—For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they're neither good nor bad, but just ...