Taylor's law

Not to be confused with Taylor Law or Taylor rule.

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]

  1. ^ a b Taylor, L. R. (1961). "Aggregation, variance and the mean". Nature. 189 (4766): 732–735. Bibcode:1961Natur.189..732T. doi:10.1038/189732a0. S2CID 4263093.
  2. ^ a b Thomas R. E. Southwood (1966). Ecological methods, with particular reference to the study of insect populations. Methuen. ISBN 9780416289305.