[BugLady]

Hi all. I'm new to the forum and came here for a specific issue with stats. I am a third semester masters student and will be finishing in May. I work with a woodwasp that oviposits within pine trees and am trying to look at ovipositin behavior. I allowed them to oviposit in regular logs and another set to oviposit in logs that had already been infested with a known competitor/predator. (n=10 in both cases).

So my question is how to go about showing that these are different. In the regular logs there was anywhere from 5-150 drill holes. In the infested logs, there were never more than 10 drills, usually there was total avoidance. Initially, I had expected an aggregation pattern to occur in the infested logs (from previous literature) but because there were so few holes, it ended up being random in all cases (for treatment and control). So I cannot analyze my data by comparing aggregation patterns.

However, since my variance to mean ratio is always right around 0, I should have a Poisson distribution of drills and this makes me think I can do a simple test like Taylor's power law? There is an obvious avoidance behavior but I'm at a loss as to how to show it with my data and have it be a testable hypothesis. Any help is greatly appreciated!