Question

Define and compare the individualistic hypothesis of H.A. Gleason and the interactive hypothesis of EE. Clements with respect to communities.

Answer 1

Gleason's individualistic hypothesis sees ecological communities as random assemblages dictated by individual species' needs and dispersal, while Clements' interactive hypothesis views communities as integrated units with closely interdependent species. Understanding these perspectives helps ecologists appraise community structure and interactions.

Step-by-step explanation:

The individualistic hypothesis of H.A. Gleason suggests that a community is nothing more than an assemblage of species that happen to occur together at one place and time. According to this view, the community structure is a chance occurrence resulting from individual species' responses to the environment and their dispersal capabilities. In contrast, the interactive hypothesis proposed by F.E. Clements views the community as a tightly integrated unit, almost like a superorganism, with strong interactions among the constituent species. Clements argued that the species within a community develop in a highly interdependent way that resembles the development of an organism, with predictable successions and a climactic stable state.

The relationship between the individual and a community in ecology mirrors these hypotheses. Under Gleason's view, the individual is paramount, and the community is a loose association. On the other hand, Clements' perspective stresses the cohesiveness and interdependence within a community, shaping individual species' existence. To ecologists, understanding the distinction between a community and an ecosystem is crucial because it helps in differentiating the biotic (community) from the abiotic and biotic interactions (ecosystem).

Answer 2

Methodological individualism is a method widely used in the social sciences, argues that all social phenomena - structure and changes - are in principle explainable by individual elements, that is, by the properties of individuals, such as their goals, their beliefs And his actions. Its defenders see it as a philosophy-method aimed at explaining and broadly understanding the evolution of the whole society as the aggregate of the decisions of individuals. In principle it is a reductionism, that is, a reduction of the explanation of all the large entities with references in the smaller ones.

Methodological individualism denies that a collective is an autonomous organism that makes decisions, and demands that the social sciences base their theories on individual action.1 This idea has also been used to attack, among other ideas, historicism, functionalism structuralist, 'sociologism' or belief that social class functions, gender roles, or ethnicity as determinants of individual behavior

Hypothesis tests are statistical procedures that evaluate two mutually exclusive statements about a population.

These two statements are called the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. They are always stated about the attributes of the population, such as the value of a parameter, the difference between the corresponding parameters of various populations or the type of distribution that best describes the population. A hypothesis test uses sample data to determine which statement is best supported by the data.

A hypothesis test can answer questions such as the following:

Is the average time to complete a Tangram game less than 2 minutes?

Is the average completion time of a different game for men and women?

Do science and engineering students complete games faster than other students?