• Oyler, Sara
  The Graduate School University of Maine
  

Because most ecological problems involve large scale processes, ecologists have begun to study large scale population dynamics. This analysis investigate the population dynamics of birds in the united states by testing the applicability of the Taylor power Law for a different avifauna on a much larger scale than Taylor's original analyses . Of 497 species analyzed , 457 conformed to the Taylor Power Law (TPL) both spatially and temporally. Compared the TPL parameters calculated in this analysis to the parameters from Taylor's analysis and found differences. Because Taylor's analysis was conducted on a much smaller scare than my continental- analysis, I repeated the analysis on a regional scale for birds in the united states. The regional distribution of TPL parameters for the United States was more similar to Taylor's original analysis. Comparison of the regional and continental analyses in the U-S. Showed that the difference in spatial. distributions was one of scale.