Nearest neighbor calculation:



Spacing Behavior Lab Nearest neighbor calculation:

This handout is a brief summary, for the blood, gore and guts, see:

Clark, P. J. and Evans, F. C. 1954. Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology 35: 445-453.

Individuals might be random, clumped, or dispersed

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Note that each of the three above patterns has the same density (number of individuals per area).

R is a measure of the observed spacing pattern relative to a random pattern. R ranges from 0 to 2.1491, with random spacing having an R of 1. An R < 1 means clustered; and R > 1 means dispersed.

R is the ratio of the observed average nearest neighbor distance to the expected average nearest neighbor distance, for a given density. The average expected nearest neighbor distance depends on the density.

Since you will almost never get an R of exactly 1, even if the population is actually random, we want a way to determine if the departure from an R of 1 is really much more than we would expect by chance (either R >> 1 or R ................
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