  This paper presents adaptive boundary element methods for positive, negative,
as well as zero order operator equations, together with proofs that they
converge at certain rates. The convergence rates are quasi-optimal in a certain
sense under mild assumptions that are analogous to what is typically assumed in
the theory of adaptive finite element methods. In particular, no
saturation-type assumption is used. The main ingredients of the proof that
constitute new findings are some results on a posteriori error estimates for
boundary element methods, and an inverse-type inequality involving boundary
integral operators on locally refined finite element spaces.
