Biodiversity Theories

Understanding why biodiversity varies across ecosystems, and how it is maintained or altered, requires bringing together multiple ecological theories across spatial and temporal scales. Yet major biodiversity frameworks are often presented separately, making it challenging to understand their relationships and practical relevance.

Biodiversity Theories: From Foundations, Mechanisms and Applications in Conservation and Sustainability provides a structured synthesis of the theories used to explain biodiversity patterns and processes. It examines foundational and contemporary perspectives including species–area relationships, island biogeography, niche theory, neutral theory, metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics, and biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships.

Moving from theory to application, the book shows how these frameworks can inform research on species distribution and community assembly, conservation planning, ecosystem management, restoration, and sustainability decision-making. It also considers emerging applications involving phylogenetic diversity, climate change, ecosystem services, environmental DNA, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence.

Designed for students, researchers, and practitioners, this book provides an interdisciplinary framework for comparing and interpreting biodiversity theories, evaluating their predictions and limitations, and translating ecological knowledge to contemporary conservation and sustainability challenges.