Daijiang Li

About

Daijiang Li is an assistant professor and quantitative ecologist at the Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on understanding how global changes have affected and will continue to affect ecological communities. As the principal investigator of the Li Lab, he leads a team that investigates quantitative ecology in a changing world, emphasizing the impacts of environmental change on ecological communities and ecosystem functioning. His work integrates ecological data with advanced quantitative methods to address pressing questions about biodiversity patterns and ecological responses to global change.

Research topics

• Ecology
• Biology
• Geography
• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Evolutionary biology

Selected publications

• The effects of urbanization on species interactions

  Nature Cities · 2025-07-29 · 7 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• GUBIC: the global urban biological invasions compendium for plants

  2024-12-27 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  1. Urban areas are foci for the introduction of non-native plant species, and they often act as launching sites for invasions into the wider environment. Although interest in biological invasions in urban areas is growing rapidly, and the extent and complexity of problems associated with invasions in these systems have increased, data on the composition and numbers of non-native plants in urbanized areas remain scattered and idiosyncratic. 2. We assembled data from multiple sources to create the…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Environmental change shapes understory plant diversity and dominance in boreal forests

  Nature Communications · 2025-11-26 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Ongoing environmental change threatens ecosystems worldwide, yet little is known about its effect on understory plant diversity, which underpins ecosystem functioning and sustainability. Here, we use Canada's National Forest Inventory database to evaluate decade-long changes in local plant diversity within understory communities. Species richness of shrubs and bryophytes increases by 8 and 11% per decade, while species evenness of herbs and bryophytes declines by 14 and 8%, respectively. Tempora…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evolving nature-based solutions for urban resilience

  Science · 2026-05-14

  article

  Despite growing investments in nature-based solutions for urban resilience, their design often overlooks a fundamental biological process: evolution. Populations of organisms that sustain nature-based solutions are dynamic and can evolve over time. Rapid evolutionary changes, driven by urban environmental stressors, such as pollution, climate extremes, and habitat fragmentation, can reshape species' traits, alter interactions, and shift ecosystem functions. We synthesize evidence of evolutionary…

  PublisherDOI

• Soil fungal influence on the diversity–invasibility relationship depends on interacting species identities

  Ecological Applications · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Elton's diversity-invasibility hypothesis, which proposes that diverse communities should be more resistant to biological invasions, has been the focus of much attention. However, little is known about how soil microbes recruited by native plants influence the vulnerability of forest ecosystems to invasion by exotic plants. Here, we present a two-part plant-soil feedback experiment (Part A, diversity effect; Part B, soil inoculation) to examine the effects of soil microorganisms associated with…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• MSA: Understanding biological invasions across spatial scales using Phylogenetic Generalized Linear Mixed Models (PGLMM)

  NSF · $316k · 2022–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Robert Guralnick

  Florida Museum of Natural History

  53 shared

• Jessica A. Oswald

  Florida Museum of Natural History

  31 shared

• Vijay Barve

  30 shared

• Maggie M. Hantak

  University of Dayton

  29 shared

• Brian J. Stucky

  Florida Museum of Natural History

  27 shared

• Michael W. Belitz

  Michigan State University

  27 shared

• Benjamin Baiser

  University of Florida

  25 shared

• Narayani Barve

  University of Tennessee at Knoxville

  21 shared

Labs

• Li LabPI

  Quantitative Ecology in a Changing World

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

Awards & honors

• Early Career Fellow of the Ecological Society of America

Similar researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Matt Turnerh-113
• Tony Goldbergh-78
• Stephanie Roberth-76