Jane is a plant ecologist with an interest in community assembly and invasion ecology. She is particularly interested in how environmental, biological and geographic factors affect the functional composition of plant communities, and she (typically) focuses on invasion ecology to tackle such questions.
Although rooted in community and invasion ecology, her work and interests extend to succession, species coexistence, disturbance, ecosystem restoration, vegetation management, novel ecosystems, assisted colonization, river health, environmental flows and climate change. To tackle these topics, she typically combines ecological theory with empirical and quantitative approaches. She is conducting an invasion-style experiment in old fields at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve and spends the northern summer in Minnesota.
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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Catford, J.A., Naiman, R.J., Chambers, L.E., Roberts, J., Douglas, M.M. & Davies, P.M. (2013) Predicting novel riparian ecosystems in a changing climate. Ecosystems 16: 382-400.
Catford, J.A., Daehler, C.C., Murphy, H.T., Sheppard, A.W., Hardesty, B.D., Westcott, D.A., Rejmánek, M., Bellingham, P.J., Pergl, J., Horvitz, C.C. & Hulme, P.E. (2012) The intermediate disturbance hypothesis and plant invasions: implications for species richness and management. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution & Systematics 14: 231-241.
Catford, J.A., Vesk, P.A., Richardson, D.M. & Pyšek, P. (2012) Quantifying levels of biological invasion: towards the objective classification of invaded and invasible ecosystems. Global Change Biology 18: 44-62.
Catford, J.A., Vesk, P.A., White, M. & Wintle, B.A. (2011) Environmental and geographic characteristics can predict hotspots of plant invasion. Diversity and Distributions 17: 1099-1110
Catford, J.A., Downes, B.J., Gippel, C.J. & Vesk, P.A. (2011) Flow regulation reduces native plant cover and facilitates exotic invasion in riparian wetlands. Journal of Applied Ecology 48: 432-442.
Catford, J.A., Jansson, R. & Nilsson, C. (2009) Reducing redundancy in invasion ecology by integrating hypotheses into a single theoretical framework. Diversity and Distributions 15: 22-40.