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2018-01-01

Bennett, J. A., Cahill, J. F.

Pollination is critical for plant fitness and population dynamics, yet little attention is paid to the role of flowering and plant-pollinator interactions in structuring plant communities, including community responses to environmental change. Changes in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF),...

2011-01-01

Cahill, J. F., Kembel, S. W.

In this study, we used data from temperate grassland plant communities in Alberta, Canada to test two longstanding hypotheses in ecology: 1) that there has been correlated evolution of the leaves and roots of plants due to selection for an integrated whole-plant resource uptake strategy, and 2)...

2015-01-01

Cahill, J. F.

The way that plants are conceptualized in the context of ecological understanding is changing. In one direction, a reductionist school ispullingplants apart into alistof measured‘traits’, fromwhichecological functionand outcomesofspecies interactions may be inferred. This special issue offers an...

2015-01-01

Mayor, S. J., Boutin, S., He, F., Cahill, J. F.

Background Niche theory predicts that human disturbance should influence the assembly of communities, favouring functionally homogeneous communities dominated by few but widespread generalists. The decline and loss of specialists leaves communities with species that are functionally more similar....

2015-01-01

Cahill, J. F., Inderjit

Soil microbial communities and processes have repeatedly been shown to impact plant community assembly and population growth. Soil-driven effects may be particularly pronounced with the introduction of plants to non-native ranges, as introduced plants are not typically accompanied by transference...

2009-01-01

Cahill, J. F., Mitchell, M. G. E., Hik, D. S.

We investigated whether plant interaction intensity in a subarctic-alpine meadow is important for determining community structure and species abundance. Using two common species as phytometers, we measured interaction intensity using a neighbor removal approach. Eight biotic and abiotic variables...

2021-01-01

Peetoom Heida, I., Brown, C., Dettlaff, M. A., Oppon, K J., Cahill, J. F.

Ecosystems are spatially heterogenous in plant community composition and function. Shrub occurrence in grasslands is a visually striking example of this, and much research has been conducted to understand the functional implications of this pattern. Within savannah ecosystems, the presence of...

2015-01-01

Pec, G. J., Karst, J., Sywenky, A. N, Cigan, P. W., Erbilgin, N., Simard, S. W., Cahill, J. F.

The current unprecedented outbreak of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) forests of western Canada has resulted in a landscape consisting of a mosaic of forest stands at different stages of mortality. Within forest stands, understory communities are...

2015-01-01

Forcino, F. L., Leighton, L. R., Twerdy, P., Cahill, J. F.

Community ecologists commonly perform multivariate techniques (e.g., ordination, cluster analysis) to assess patterns and gradients of taxonomic variation. A critical requirement for a meaningful statistical analysis is accurate information on the taxa found within an ecological sample. However,...

2018-01-01

Dettlaff, M. A, Marshall, V., Erbilgin, N., Cahill, J. F.

Although the negative effects of root herbivores on plant fitness are expected to be similar to those of above-ground herbivores, the study of below-ground plant defences is limited compared to the rich literature on above-ground defences. Current theory predicts that concentrations of defensive...