50‐year anniversary of Lloyd's "mean crowding": Ideas on patchy distributions. (3rd July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wade, Michael J.; Fitzpatrick, Courtney L.; Lively, Curtis M.
• Editors: Fenton, Andy
• Is Part Of: Journal of animal ecology. Volume 87:Number 5(2018:Sep.)
• Page Start: 1221
• Page End: 1226
• Publication Date: 2018-07-03
• Subjects: experience of competition -- host–parasite -- kin selection -- mean crowding -- metapopulations -- patchiness -- sexual selection -- spatial aggregation; Animal ecology -- Periodicals; 591.7
• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12854
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0021-8790

Abstract

Abstract: This year marks the 50th anniversary of Monte B. Lloyd's "Mean Crowding" (1967) paper, in which he introduced a metric that accounts for an individual's experience of conspecific density. Mean crowding allows ecologists to measure the degree of spatial aggregation of individuals in a manner relevant to intraspecific competition for resources. We take the concept of mean crowding a step beyond its most common usage and that it has a mathematical relationship to many of the most important concepts in ecology and evolutionary biology. Mean crowding, a first‐order approximation of the degree of nonrandomness in a distribution, can function as a powerful heuristic that can unify concepts across disciplines in a more general way that Lloyd originally envisioned. Abstract : The novelty of this article lies in illustrating mean crowding's utility as a measure fundamental to a large number of different topics in evolutionary ecology.