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The relationship between species diversity and sampled area is fundamental to ecology. Traditionally, theories of the species–area relationship have been dominated by random-placement models. Such models were used to formulate the canonical theory of species–area curves and species abundances. In this paper, however, armed with a detailed data set from a moist tropical forest, we investigate the validity of random placement and suggest improved models based upon spatial aggregation. By accounting for intraspecific, small-scale aggregation, we develop a cluster model which reproduces empirical species–area curves with high fidelity. We find that inter-specific aggregation patterns, on the other hand, do not affect the species–area curves significantly. We demonstrate that the tendency for a tree species to aggregate, as well as its average clump size, is not significantly correlated with the species' …