Carla D'Antonio

Research

My research focus has been to understand processes that control invasions by non-native species into ecological communities and how and when the addition of some individual species affects ecosystem structure and functioning. I seek a mechanistic understanding of ecological patterns and process and although I work primarily at the community and ecosystem levels, I also examine individual plant and population processes. Such an integrated approach is often necessary to answer questions about the importance of individual species and how communities and ecosystems will change with increasing human population pressure, increasing movement of plant species, nitrogen deposition and climatic fluctuations. I also try to link my research questions and findings to the restoration of community and ecosystem processes in degraded ecosystems.

Students and postdocs in my lab work on a variety of research questions related to understanding controls over vegetation change such as species invasions, the importance of fire and nutrient availability to vegetation change, and the impact of individual species on 'native' ecosystem structure or functioning. While the studies of species invasions has important conservation implications, these species also offer an important opportunity to probe factors structuring plant communities and sources of variation in species effects on ecosystem processes. But in my lab we also study vegetation change that may not involve species invasions. For example we are studying ecosystem responses to high intensity wildfire events in sites where non-native species currently play very little role.