The hierarchy-of-hypotheses approach.

Abstract

Abstract Reviewing empirical evidence for major hypotheses in ecology is connected to two methodological challenges. First, all available empirical tests for a given hypothesis should be identified, collected and organized. This can be difficult due to divergent formulations of the hypothesis in the literature and divergent empirical approaches to address it. Second, the entire body of available data should be used to systematically assess the overall level of support of the hypothesis. Many approaches (e.g. formal meta-analyses) typically use only a fraction of the available data, often because of inconsistencies in the data. In this chapter, we show how the new hierarchy-of-hypotheses (HoH) approach can be used to overcome these challenges.