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SUMMARY (1) In an initial analysis, the inter- and intra-specific relationships between spatial and temporal variances and means are examined comparatively within and between ninety-seven aphid, 263 moth and eighty-four bird species at up to 300 sites for about a decade throughout Great Britain. (2) Despite the vast amount of data available, from which more than half the species sampled had been removed before analysis because they were numerically inadequate, parameter bias remains in some species and results in interspecific artifacts. (3) Population parameters dependent on small samples with arithmetic means below two and variances below four, are subject to distortion affecting all measures of aggregation. The artifact of small discrete samples is illustrated by spurious patterns in the relationship between log mean and log variance. (4) In contrast, taxonomic defects in the data were discovered by inconsistencies in the analysis of spatio-temporal pattern because of the large numbers of species sampled simultaneously.
Taylor et al. (Fri,) studied this question.