Research

Anthropogenic climate change is affecting organisms and ecological systems across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and efforts to limit carbon emissions have met with political, social and technical obstacles. Climate emergencies may motivate the use of climate intervention technologies to counteract catastrophic changes, but little is known about the ecological implications should these be employed. With a group of ecologists and climate scientists, I have been working on efforts to explore the relative risks and potential amelioration of climate change risks of climate intervention, focusing on SAI–stratospheric aerosol injection, or solar geoengineering. These technologies are being actively explored by climate scientists, and it is critical for ecologists to have input into what is understood about how these technologies might impact natural populations, ecological communities, species distributions, and ecological processes.

Phoebe L. Zarnetske*, Jessica Gurevitch* [lead authors], Janet Franklin, Peter Groffman, Cheryl Harrison, Jessica Hellmann, Forrest M. Hoffman, Shan Kothari, Alan Robock, Simone Tilmes, Daniele Visioni, Jin Wu, Lili Xia, Cheng‐En Yang. 2021. Potential ecological impacts of climate intervention by reflecting sunlight to cool Earth. PNAS 2021 Vol. 118 No. 15 e1921854118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921854118

Biological invasions have been the focus of a great deal of ecological research. My work has included both conceptual advances in understanding the way biological invasions proceed, their impacts, and the factors contributing to their success or lack of success. With students and collaborators, we have carried out long term demographic research on multiple populations of the invasive plant Centaurea stoebe in the eastern U.S. (pictured), examined the evidence is for invasions as a threat to biodiversity, and broadened the context for studying biological invasions to the new concept of landscape demography–the demography of multiple populations across spatial scales.
Akin‐Fajiye, Morodoluwa; Gurevitch, Jessica. 2020. Increased reproduction under disturbance is responsible for high population growth rate of invasive Centaurea stoebe. Biological Invasions 22: 1947‐1956

Peng, Shijia, Nicole L. Kinlock, Jessica Gurevitch, and Shaolin Peng. 2018. Correlation of native and exotic species richness: a global meta‐analysis finds no invasion paradox across scales, Ecology (open access) https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2552.

Gurevitch, J., G.A. Fox, N.L. Fowler and C.H. Graham. 2016. Landscape demography: Population change and its drivers across spatial scales. The Quarterly Review of Biology 91: 459‐484.

Yu, F.K., Akin‐Fajiye, Morodoluwa, Magar, Khum Thapa, Ren, Jie, and Jessica Gurevitch. 2016. A global systematic review of ecological field studies on two major invasive plant species, Ageratina adenophora and Chromolaena odorata. Diversity and Distributions 22: 1174‐1185.

Gurevitch, J., G. A. Fox, G. M. Wardle, Inderjit and D. Taub. 2011. Emergent insights from the synthesis of conceptual frameworks for biological invasions. Ecology Letters 14: 407‐418.

Gurevitch, J. and D. Padilla. 2004. Are invasive species a major cause of extinctions? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19: 470‐474.

Research synthesis methodology introduced the scientific approaches of systematic reviews and the quantitative methodology of meta-analysis to reviewing the literature on scientific questions. My work represents early efforts to bring these powerful methods to synthesizing results from ecological studies. I have continued to refine and develop methodology and standards for research synthesis in ecology and related disciplines, and contributed to many publications using meta-analysis to address important ecological questions.

Gurevitch, J., L. L. Morrow, A. Wallace and J. S. Walsh. 1992. A meta‐analysis of field experiments on competition. American Naturalist 140:539‐572.

Gurevitch, J. and L. V. Hedges. 1993. Meta‐analysis: combining the results of independent experiments. In: Scheiner, S.M. and J. Gurevitch, The Design and Analysis of Ecological Experiments. pp. 378‐98

Adams, D.C., J. Gurevitch and M.S. Rosenberg. 1997. Resampling tests for meta‐analysis of ecological data. Ecology 78:1277‐1283.

Gurevitch, J. and L.V. Hedges. 1999. Statistical issues in conducting ecological meta‐analyses. Ecology 80:1142‐1149.

Hedges, L. V., J. Gurevitch and P. Curtis. 1999. Meta‐analysis of response ratios in experimental ecology. Ecology 80:1150‐1156.

Koricheva, J., J. Gurevitch and K. Mengersen, eds. 2013. Handbook of Meta‐analysis in Ecology and Evolution. (Princeton Univ. Press)

Gurevitch, Jessica, Julia Koricheva, Shinichi Nakagawa and Gavin Stewart. 2018. Meta‐analysis and the science of research synthesis. Nature 555, pages 175–182, doi:10.1038/nature25753.

I teach or have taught ecology, plant ecology, experimental design, statistics and even introductory biology. With colleagues, I have authored and edited a number of textbooks and other general texts that have found their way into the hands of students in many parts of the world.

Gurevitch, J., S.M. Scheiner and G.L. Fox. 2020. The Ecology of Plants, 3rd Ed. Sinauer Assoc./Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK and New York, NY, USA

Gurevitch, J., S.M. Scheiner and G.L. Fox. 2006. The Ecology of Plants, 2nd Ed. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.

Gurevitch, J., S.M.Scheiner and G.L. Fox. 2002. The Ecology of Plants. Sinauer Assoc., Sunderland, MA.

Koricheva, J., J. Gurevitch and K. Mengersen, eds. 2013. Handbook of Meta‐analysis in Ecology and Evolution. (Princeton Univ. Press)

Scheiner, S.M and J. Gurevitch, Eds. 2001. Design and Analysis of Ecological Experiments, 2nd Ed. Oxford Univ. Press.

M. Scheiner and J. Gurevitch, Eds. 1993. The Design and Analysis of Ecological Experiments. Chapman & Hall, NY and London.