News

Our lab recently attended the Ecological Society of America (ESA) 2026 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. Five current and former lab members presented their research and connected with colleagues from across the ecological community. Presenters, listed alphabetically by last name, with presentation abstracts: Kara Dobson https://events.rdmobile.com/Lists/Details/3563553 Yiluan Song (former lab member) https://events.rdmobile.com/Lists/Details/3563961 Hyun Seok Yoon https://events.rdmobile.com/Lists/Details/3563312 Kai Zhu https://events.rdmobile.com/Lists/Details/3563455 Heng-Xing Zou https://events.rdmobile.com/Lists/Details/3563269 Congratulations to all our presenters! The meeting offered a valuable opportunity [...]

Michigan Public | By Anna Barnes Published May 27, 2026 at 6:46 PM EDT   In Michigan, sugar maple tree populations are rising and eastern redbud trees are making their way north while coniferous trees, like the black spruce, continue to decline. Conservationists suspect there are a multitude of causes for this changing composition, including climate warming, and the authors of a new study say it's just shown a direct link between changing plant communities and heat. Kara [...]

We’re celebrating two great milestones in the lab. Congratulations to Kara on her new paper in PNAS (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2533434123)—a fantastic achievement. We’re also wishing Yuhao the best as he wraps up his postdoc and starts his new position as an Associate Professor at East China Normal University. Congrats to both!

From Michigan News By Matt Davenport Analyses led by the University of Michigan can help land managers and conservationists help nature prepare for a warmer future Warming experiments including B4WarmED, which is shown here and operated by the University of Minnesota, enabled a new analysis led by the University of Michigan. That analysis has shown that just a few species can dominate a plant community’s thermal preferences as the planet’s temperatures increase. Image credit: Artur Stefanski Study: A [...]

Congratulations to Jiali Zhu on receiving the Samuel A. Graham Award, and to Tim Muhich on receiving the William B. Stapp Award for Excellence! In addition, Tim has also been awarded the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship (2026–2027). We’re proud to celebrate Jiali and Tim for these well-deserved recognitions.

The lab hosted Songlin Fei from Purdue University on March 27, 2026.

From Michigan News By Matt Davenport Despite this gap, however, there are opportunities to communicate the real-world impacts of climate change, the research team says In analyzing tweets about pollen, University of Michigan researchers have found new opportunities to communicate about climate change. Image credit: Twitter/X (Cardi B post)/Adobe Stock (Pollen photo) Study: Political ideology and scientific communication shape human perceptions of pollen seasons (DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf386) Two things are clear from a University of Michigan analysis of [...]

We are excited to announce that three members of our lab presented their latest research at the AGU25 Annual Meeting held December 15–19, 2025, in New Orleans, LA. Shengxi Gui shared research focusing on the impact of prior burns on reducing the risk of irreversible forest loss following wildfires. GC12D-07: Low-Severity Prior Burns Reduce the Risk of Irreversible Forest Loss Following Crucial Wildfires Yiluan Song delivered two presentations exploring how biological changes and scientific communication shape human perceptions of [...]

The lab recently gathered to bid farewell to Yiluan Song and Wenqi Luo as they finish their postdoc appointments. Yiluan is heading to the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor, and Wenqi is moving back to China and has just published a paper in Global Change Biology—congratulations! Best wishes to both as they move forward! The online casino industry continues to grow as more players search for reliable websites with a modern gaming experience. [...]

Our lab’s expertise on tree migration was recently featured in a short video collaboration with Alex Haraus! In the video, Dr. Kai Zhu, together with colleague Dr. Inés Ibáñez, discusses how and why trees are migrating in response to climate change—a phenomenon with important implications for the future of our forests. Check out the video to learn more about our research and the impacts of shifting tree populations: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQ9chFIkRIJ/