mavolio

Main profile

Avolio, Meghan

Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences

meghan.avolio@jhu.edu

Human activities affect and alter plant communities worldwide. Mechanisms underlying these changes and their consequences for ecosystems, however, are still poorly understood. Global change and urbanization are two of the most important outcomes of human activities and often alter multiple abiotic resources simultaneously, exposing plants to environmental stress. I aim to identify patterns of plant responses to global change and urbanization at multiple levels of biological organization, from individual responses to populations through whole communities. Ultimately, I link whether changes in the plant community affect ecosystem function.

For my master’s research, at Fordham University, I studied the effects of nitrogen deposition on mycorrhizal fungal gene expression and communities. For my PhD, at Yale University, I studied the adaptability of the dominant tallgrass species Andropogon gerardii to increased precipitation variability. During a postdoctoral position at the University of Utah, I investigated plant community assembly in cultivated urban ecosystems by studying both urban forests and residential yards. I am also involved with several global change ecology studies at Konza Prairie Biological Station in Kansas, a Long-Term Ecological Research site.

At SESYNC I will work to develop metrics of community change using rank abundance curves.

 

CV: 

Avolio_CV_2015_Sept.pdf

Associated Projects: 

Metrics of Community Change

Resources
A comprehensive approach to analyzing community dynamics using rank abundance curves	Oct 17, 2019 Article published in Ecosphere.
Urban plant diversity in Los Angeles, California: Species and functional type turnover in cultivated landscapes	Sep 17, 2019 Article published in Plants, People, Planet
A multi-city comparison of front and backyard differences in plant species diversity and nitrogen cycling in residential landscapes	Jun 14, 2018 Article published in Landscape and Urban Planning.
Human and biophysical legacies shape contemporary urban forests: A literature synthesis	Mar 08, 2018 Article published in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening.
Homogenization of plant diversity, composition, and structure in North American urban yards	Feb 15, 2018 Article published in Ecosphere.
Biodiverse cities: the nursery industry, homeowners, and neighborhood differences drive urban tree composition	Feb 08, 2018 Article published in Ecological Monographs.
Ecological homogenization of residential macrosystems	Jun 22, 2017 Article published in Nature: Ecology & Evolution.
Nutrient additions cause divergence of tallgrass prairie plant communities resulting in loss of ecosystem stability	Jun 20, 2016 Article published in the Journal of Ecology.
A framework for quantifying the magnitude and variability of community responses to global change drivers	Dec 21, 2015 Article published in Ecosphere.

Links: 

Avolio Lab

Google Scholar Profile

Urban Botany Blog

Community Response to Resource Experiments Dataset

Research Interest: 

grassland plant communities, urban ecology, adaptation, global change, genetic diversity, mutualism