caa a22 4500 606164723 CHVBK 20210128100650.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150101xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10144-014-0463-0 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10144-014-0463-0 Robustness of Taylor's law under spatial hierarchical groupings of forest tree samples [Elektronische Daten] [Meng Xu, William Schuster, Joel Cohen] Testing how well Taylor's law (TL) describes spatial variation of the population density of a species requires grouping sampling areas (patches of habitat) into blocks so that a mean and a variance of the population density can be calculated over the patches in each block. The relationship between specific groupings and TL remains largely unknown. Here, using tree counts from a deciduous forest, we studied the effect of four biological methods of grouping sampling areas into blocks on the form and parameters of TL. Regardless of the method of grouping, the species-specific basal area densities obeyed TL, and the estimated slopes were not significantly different from one grouping method to another. Surprisingly, TL remained valid when four kinds of randomizations were performed to the biological groupings and tree census. These randomizations randomly assigned sampling areas to blocks, and/or randomized the species composition within or across sampling areas. We found that the form of TL was robust to different grouping methods and species randomizations, but its parameter values depended significantly on species compositions at sampling areas. The Society of Population Ecology and Springer Japan, 2014 Basal area nationallicence Bitterlich sampling nationallicence Fluctuation scaling nationallicence Linear regression nationallicence Mean-variance relationship nationallicence Quadratic regression nationallicence Xu Meng Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University, 10065, New York, NY, USA aut Schuster William Black Rock Forest Consortium, 12518, Cornwall, NY, USA aut Cohen Joel Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University, 10065, New York, NY, USA aut Population Ecology Springer Japan 57/1(2015-01-01), 93-103 1438-3896 57:1<93 2015 57 10144 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-014-0463-0 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-014-0463-0 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Xu Meng Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University, 10065, New York, NY, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Schuster William Black Rock Forest Consortium, 12518, Cornwall, NY, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Cohen Joel Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University, 10065, New York, NY, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Population Ecology Springer Japan 57/1(2015-01-01), 93-103 1438-3896 57:1<93 2015 57 10144