Occupancy, Spatial Variance, and the Abundance of Species

A notable and consistent ecological observation known for long time is that spatial variance in the abundance of a increases with its mean abundance and that this relationship typically conforms well to a simple law (Taylor 1961). Indeed, such models can be at a spectrum of spatial scales to describe spatial in the abundance of a single species at different or in different regions and of different species across the same set of areas (Taylor et al. 1978; Taylor and Woiwod 1982).