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 ordinary ...

The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography (here "Unified Theory" or "UNTB") is a theory and the title of a monograph by ecologist Stephen Hubbell. The hypothesis aims to explain the ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

Some of nature's mysteries have kept scientists busy for decades—for example, the processes that drive evolution. The question of whether certain differences between and within species are caused by ...

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 ...

A major evolutionary theory says most genetic changes don’t really matter, but new evidence suggests that’s not true. Researchers found that helpful mutations happen surprisingly often. The twist is ...