The general theory of species abundance distributions

Abstract. A central issue in ecology today is that of the factors determining the relative abundance of species within a natural community. The proper application of the principles of statistical physics to the problem of species abundance distributions (SADs) has enabled us to identify the fundamental ecological principles responsible for the near universal features observed. These principles are (i) a limit on the number of individuals in an ecological guild and (ii) per capita birth and death rates. We thus unify the neutral theory of Hubbell [1], the master equation approach of Volkov et al [2, 3] and a recent attempt at deploying statistical mechanics to deal with this problem, the idiosyncratic [extreme niche] theory of Pueyo et al [4]; we have identified the true origin of the prior in [4]. We also find in our results clear indications that niches must be very flexible and that temporal fluctuations on all sorts of scales are of considerable importance in community structure.