Local speciation can be incorporated into neutral theory of biodiversity

•Species at different landscapes may present various speciation rates.•Integrating local speciation can reflect spatial heterogeneity of speciation rates.•Local-speciation neutral model has a better fit on BCI tree abundance data.•The estimated local speciation rate was very high in comparison to background rate.

In this report, I incorporate local speciation into neutral theory of biodiversity to predict species abundance distribution patterns. By fitting the local-speciation model to the abundance data of tree species in Barro Colorado Island of Panama, the results showed that the new model performed better than the original neutral model without local speciation. Moreover, the estimated local speciation rate (v′=0.0107v′=0.0107) was found to be ten-fold larger than the estimated background speciation rate (v=0.0011)v=0.0011, indicating that local speciation should not be ignored in neutral theory. Given that species across different local habitats and landscapes may present heterogeneous speciation rates, it is valuable to incorporate local speciation into neutral theory to study spatiotemporal patterns of ecological assemblages.