If you're hiking through a forest, you might notice that some species of plants - like certain flowers or bushes - seem evenly spaced, while others - like wild mushrooms - are clustered together in only certain parts of the habitat.

Within any given plant or animal population, or group of individuals of the same species living in the same area, individuals can be spaced in different ways called dispersion patterns. There are three types of dispersion patterns.
Clumped dispersion is when individuals in a population are clustered together, creating some patches with many individuals and some patches with no individuals. In uniform dispersion, individuals are spaced evenly throughout an area. And in random dispersion, individuals are arranged without any apparent pattern.
In natural populations, random dispersion is rare, while clumped dispersion, which we'll focus on in this lesson, is the most common pattern.
Clumped dispersion is often due to an uneven distribution of nutrients or other resources in the environment. It can also be caused by social interactions between individuals. Additionally, in organisms that don't move, such as plants, offspring might be very close to their parents and show clumped dispersion patterns. Let's further examine each of these three reasons for clumped dispersion.

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