Graduate Student, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Stony Brook University, Ecology and Evolution
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Dr. Jessica Gurevitch
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About
I Graduated from Kalamazoo College in 2008 and I am currently in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution at SUNY Stonybrook. My current work involves the invasiveness of Centaurea stoebe.
Centaurea stoebe (previously C. maculosa), or spotted knapweed is a plant that is native to Europe and has become extremely invasive in the rangelands of the Western United States. Although it was introduced to both the Western and Eastern US in the late 1800's, it is less of a problem on the East Coast, and is often found only in disturbed sites or along roadways. However, anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that its range is increasing in some of these areas.
I'm currently working on establishing experiments to measure demography of Centaurea stoebe at the landscape level, which will allow us to model population growth over large areas such as the East Coast to determine whether or not a variety of factors such as disturbance and climate are causing this species to begin invading.
I'm also interested in seedbanks and the demography of seeds. Seedbanks are often ignored or not well accounted for in demographic work on plants, yet preliminary modeling shows that in some cases, seedbank dynamics may play a significant role in a plant's life history. In particular, at the edge of ranges or on invasive fronts seedbanks can be unsaturated and become a net sink for seeds. Centaurea stoebe makes a good system to study this in since it is known to have a relatively long-lived seed bank.
