Gleason developed the individualistic (also known as open or continuum) concept of community, with the abundance of a population of a species changing gradually along complex environmental gradients, but individually, not equally to other populations.
In the neutral theory view of the community (or metacommunity), popularized by Hubbell, species are functionally equivalent, and the abundance of a population of a species changes by stochastic demographic processes (i.e., random births and deaths) [REF].