The history of NETI begins in 2006 during a meeting on Ecological Complexity organized in Chile and wehere leading scientists behind several theories in ecology (Metabolic Scaling Theory, Neutral Theory, Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology, Network Theory and Trait based ecology) attended by invitation. The meeting was held at the Valparaiso Complex Systems Institute (ISCV) in Valparaíso (Chile). During the meeting we held two days standard workshop type preentations and discussions and then we travel to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile and spent a week travelling around the highlands in four trucks, sleeping in tents and cabins, trwing our theories in the field and developing trust and a common language. The last day of the meeting at the city of Iquique, we realized that all these theories were connected in non-trivial ways and that integration among them was an important pursue. However, we also realized that before attempting any synthesis and integration we should reflect on the essential characteristics of theories and their role in science and ecology in particular. We met two or three times during the coming years and reflected upon the role of theory in Ecology and produced two pieces that were published in the journal Bioscience (see Marquet et al. 2014, 2015 and Supporting material 1) as well as some initial integration of theories (Odwyer et al 2009, Harte et al 2015). During the last meeting in Chile (held at Las Cruces Marine Station near Santiago and Senda Darwin Biological Station in Chiloé in 2014) we decided to become a Network For Ecological Theory Integration (NETI) and agreed to meet again each two years. So we met at The Santa Fe Institute in (2016) and at the Center for Theoretical Study in Prague (2018) to continue our quest for the integration of theories.