Mycorrhizal ecology: In the land of the one-eyed king

The dataset consists of two excel shetts, Appendix One and Appendix Two. Appendix One is a summary of the 50 hits of a literature search that was contacted on the 13th of October 2024. I searched the Web of Knowledge core collection with the search string “hypothes* (Title) and mycorrhiza of arbuscular or ectomycorrhiza or Glomeromycot* (Topic)”. Appendix Two conists of the hypotheses that were extracted, their postulates, and their classification over six descriptors:

1.    The topic of the hypothesis This was a categorical variable with eight levels: plant nutrition; stress and pathogen load for the plant host; nutrient cycling; ecosystem services and functions unrelated to nutrient cycling; plant interspecific and intraspecific competition; evolutionary success of the mutualism; evolutionary success of the plant host; seedling success.2.    Type of mycorrhiza This was a categorical with four levels describing the types of mycorrhiza to which the hypothesis referred: ECM; AM; both ECM and AM; other.3.    Type of ecosystem This was a categorical variable with three levels: agricultural; forests; any.4.    The classification as either holobiont-type or independent partners type of hypothesis which was a categorical variable with two levels.5.    Universality: Categorical variable with two levels, describing the settings to which the hypothesis could be applied at: no exceptions and some exceptions.6.    Predictions type This was a categorical variable with two levels describing whether the hypothesis was just descriptive or assumed underlying mechanisms that can later be used to make predictions: explanatory and observational).

The R file contains the analysis that was carried out to generate the hierarchy of hypotheses.