Neutral Theory of Biodiversity: Ecological Drift Simulator

This simulation renders a lattice community of individuals — every sphere ecologically identical regardless of species — undergoing Hubbell's zero-sum birth-death-speciation process directly in 3D. Each step a random individual dies and is replaced either by a copy of a neighbor (dispersal) or, with a tunable speciation probability, by a brand-new species. Watch species-neutral ecological drift alone generate the classic hollow-curve species-abundance distribution, track live species richness and Shannon diversity as generations elapse, switch between local and global dispersal to see spatial clustering appear and disappear, and trigger a mass disturbance to watch the community recover.