Taylor's power law is an empirical law in ecology that relates the variance of the number of individuals of a species per unit area of habitat to the corresponding mean by a power law relationship.[1] It is named after the ecologist who first proposed it in 1961, Lionel Roy Taylor (1924–2007).[2] Taylor's original name for this relationship was the law of the mean.[1] The name Taylor's law was coined by Southwood in 1966.[2]