BSCI-1510L Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Juniperus Virginiana, Symphoricarpos Orbiculatus, Warner Parks
25 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Understanding the distribution and abundance of organisms in their environment is one of the most fundamental tasks in the field of ecology. As a practical matter, it is almost never possible to locate and count (or measure) every single individual in a population. So sampling a subset of the population is generally the only means to gain an understanding of the population as a whole. If all individuals in the population were identical, then sampling would be easy one would only need to measure a single individual. However, since there is variation among individuals in a population, it is necessary to sampleenough individuals to adequately represent the variation. The sampled individuals must also be representativeof the population as a whole. For example, if only the largest individuals were sampled, then the sample would falsely portray the population distribution as larger than it really was.
