Introduction

The pattern of spatial distribution of specific individuals is the population dispersion. There are three potential dispersion patterns in populations (see Figure 8.4, on the next page). The individuals of the population may be randomly distributed in the habitat. Or they may have a clumped dispersion pattern: groups of individuals clustered together, separated from other such groups. The third possibility is that they are evenly distributed at regular intervals.

Learning Goals

After reading your text and completing this exercise, you should be able to:

• Understand the three main patterns of dispersion.
• Learn how to use the Poisson distribution to analyze dispersion
• Study the effect of the grid size on dispersion analysis