Daijiang Li

Position title: Assistant Professor

Pronouns: he/him/his

Address:
211 Birge Hall

Education: PhD (2016) University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A. (2016) University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A. (2011) Sun Yat-Sen University, B.S. (2008) Yunnan University
Research Interests: Biodiversity, Phenology, Species interactions, Environmental change, Plant community dynamics, Macroecology, Statistical modeling, Machine learning, Data Science
Publications: Google Scholar

We are interested in understanding the causes and consequences of changes in ecological communities (e.g., species distributions, species compositions, plant phenology, and biodiversity) under environmental changes (e.g., climate change, land use change, urbanization, species invasions, and pollution). We use a combination of field observations, experiments, and quantitative methods (e.g. statistical modeling, machine learning, and data science) to address these questions. Our research spans multiple spatial and temporal scales, from local to global, and from days to decades. Our ultimate goal is to provide insights into the mechanisms driving ecological changes and to inform conservation and management strategies. See more information at https://www.dlilab.com/research/.

Selected publications:

Li, D., Belitz, M., Campbell, L., & Guralnick, R. (2025). Extreme weather events have strong but different impacts on plant and insect phenology. Nature Climate Change, 1-8.
Moreno-García, P., Savage, A., Salgado, A. L., Tartaglia, E. S., Cocciardi, J. M., Aronson, M. F., … & Li, D. (2025). The effects of urbanization on species interactions. Nature Cities, 1-10.
Potgieter, L. J., Li, D., Baiser, B., Kühn, I., Aronson, M. F., Carboni, M., … & Cadotte, M. W. (2024). Cities shape the diversity and spread of nonnative species. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 55.
Moreno-García, P., Montaño-Centellas, F., Liu, Y., Reyes-Mendez, E. Y., Jha, R. R., Guralnick, R. P., … & Li, D. (2024). Long-term nitrogen deposition reduces the diversity of nitrogen-fixing plants. Science advances, 10(42), eadp7953.
Li, D. (2023). rtrees: an R package to assemble phylogenetic trees from megatrees. Ecography, 2023(7), e06643.
Li, D., Record, S., Sokol, E. R., Bitters, M. E., Chen, M. Y., Chung, Y. A., … & Zarnetske, P. L. (2022). Standardized NEON organismal data for biodiversity research. Ecosphere, 13(7), e4141.
Li, D., Dinnage, R., Nell, L. A., Helmus, M. R., & Ives, A. R. (2020). phyr: An r package for phylogenetic species‐distribution modelling in ecological communities. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 11(11), 1455-1463.
Li, D., Miller, J. E., & Harrison, S. (2019). Climate drives loss of phylogenetic diversity in a grassland community. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(40), 19989-19994.
Li, D., Stucky, B. J., Deck, J., Baiser, B., & Guralnick, R. P. (2019). The effect of urbanization on plant phenology depends on regional temperature. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(12), 1661-1667.
Li, D., & Ives, A. R. (2017). The statistical need to include phylogeny in trait‐based analyses of community composition. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 8(10), 1192-1199.
Li, D., & Waller, D. (2015). Drivers of observed biotic homogenization in pine barrens of central Wisconsin. Ecology, 96(4), 1030-1041.