Jacquelyn Gill

Jacquelyn GillAssociate Professor of Paleoecology & Plant Ecology, School of Biology and Ecology and Climate Change Institute

Degree: Ph.D. 2012 University of Wisconsin, Madison
Phone: 207.581.2305
Location: 134 Sawyer Hall
Research Topic:
Paleoecology, community ecology, vegetation dynamics, extinction, climate change, biotic interactions
Research Program:
I am a paleoecologist and biogeographer, bringing the perspectives of space and time to bear on questions in ecology and global change science. My work takes a community ecology approach to help understand how species and their interactions have responded to interacting drivers (like climate change and extinction) through time. I’m especially interested 1) novel communities and ecosystems 2) the legacies “biotic upheavals” like the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, 3) biotic drivers of landscape change on long (>1,000 years) timescales (e.g., herbivory, dispersal, insect outbreaks), and 5) what the paleorecord tells us about the ability of plants to migrate in response to climate change.
Publications:
Gill, J. L., J. W. Williams, S. T. Jackson, K. B. Lininger, G. S. Robinson. (2009). Pleistocene megafaunal collapse, novel plant communities, and enhanced fire regimes in North America. Science 326(5956): 1100-1103. [Supplemental online material] See also the accompanying Perspectives article by Chris Johnson and listen to the Science podcast interview.
Gill, J. L., J. W. Williams, S. T. Jackson, J. P. Donnely, G. C. Schellinger. (2012). Climatic and megaherbivory controls on late-glacial vegetation dynamics: A new, high-resolution multi-proxy record from Silver Lake, OH. Quaternary Science Reviews 34: 66-80.
Schwartz, M. W. , J. J. Hellmann, J. M. McLachlan, D. F. Sax, J. O. Borevitz, J. Brennan, A. E. Camacho, G. Ceballos, H. Doremus, R. Early, J. R. Etterson, J. L. Gill, P. Gonzalez, N. Green, L. Hannah, D. W. Jamieson, D. Javeline, B. A. Minteer, J. Odenbaugh, S. Polasky, D. M. Richardson, T. L. Root, H. D. Safford, O. Sala, S. H. Schneider, A. R. Thompson, J. W. Williams, M. Velland, P. Vitt, S. Zellmer. (2012). Managed relocation: integrating the scientific, regulatory, and ethical challenges. Bioscience 62 (8): 747-743.
Gill, J. L., K. K. McLauchlan, A. M. Skibbe, S. J. Goring, John W. Williams. (2013). Linking abundances of the dung fungus Sporormiella to the density of American bison (Bison bison): implications for assessing grazing by megaherbivores in the paleorecord. Journal of Ecology 101(5): 1125-1136.
Gill, J. L. (2014). The ecological legacy of the late Quaternary extinctions of megaherbivores. New Phytologist 201 (4): 1163-1169.
Seddon, A. W. R., A. Baker, A. W. Mackay, E. E. Ellis, L. Gillson, E. Johnson, S. Juggins, K. Willis, C. Buck, C. A. Froyd, V. Jones, M. Macias-Fauria, D. Nogues-Bravo, S. Punyasena, E. Breman, J. L. Gill, K. Mills, J. Morris, A. Tanentzap, T. Roland, and the Palaeo50 Working Group. (2014). Looking forward through the past: identification of 50 priority research questions in palaeoecology. Journal of Ecology 102 (1): 256-267.