Fuentes Marcelino
Facultade de Ciencias, Universidade da Coruña, E-15071 A Coruña, Spain.
Theor Popul Biol. 2004 Nov;66(3):199-203. doi: 10.1016/j.tpb.2004.06.003.
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.
生物多样性的统一中性理论为物种多样性模式提供了一个非常简单且有悖直觉的解释。通过规定物种形成、群落大小和扩散，并完全忽略个体生物和物种之间的差异，它生成的生物多样性模式与自然模式惊人地相似。在这里我表明，即使在生物之间添加微小差异也会产生非常不同的模式和预测。在扩散广泛的大型群落中，个体生物在生存能力上的可遗传差异导致生物多样性模式的特征是单个具有相对高适应性的物种占据主导地位。在局部扩散的群落中，相同的差异会导致群落迅速灭绝。我得出结论，统一中性理论对于偏离其最具争议性假设的微小偏差并不稳健。
