ABSTRACT
Ecology is one of the more interesting and challenging areas of scientific research. It interfaces and interacts conceptually and in terms of modeling considerations with biology, the basic sciences, environmental science, evolution and other disciplines. The issues arising in relation to the changing environment have lead to a growing focus on the modeling of ecological phenomena. Tracking both the micro and macro level ecological patterns and changes in populations provide ecological (and biological) researchers with a wide variety of research contexts and an equally wide ranging set of study designs and related statistical models. In settings such as ecology and biology there often are theoretical expectations that can be expressed in terms of underlying probability and likelihood models and related null values for the key parameters in question. The relationships between species abundance and average body mass and metabolism as a fundamental aspect of ecological and biological relationships remain the subject of much study.
