Research
biogeography
What are the patterns of species' geographic distributions and biodiversity across the globe?
How are humans and climate change reshaping species' geographic distribution and biodiversity?
Do sister species have similar ecological niches and geographic ranges?
species' distribution in the geographic space
ecological niche in the environmental space
- Pillet,M et al. (including X Feng) (2022) Elevated extinction risk of cacti under climate change. Nature Plants, 8, 366–372.
- Feng, X, et al. (2021) How deregulation, drought and increasing fire impact Amazonian biodiversity. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03876-7
- Feng, X., Qiao, H. (2021) Accounting for dispersal improves the understanding of species abundance patterns. Global Ecology and Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13412
- Enquist, BJ, X Feng et al. (2019). The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. Science Advances, 5: eaaz0414.
- Feng, X et sl. (2017). Hiding in a cool climatic niche in the Tropics? An assessment of the ecological biogeography of hairy long-nosed armadillos (Dasypus pilosus). Tropical Conservation Science, 10: 1-13.
- Feng, X, et al. (2016). Climatic similarity of extant and extinct Dasypus armadillos. Journal of Mammalian Evolution, 24: 193-206.
- Feng, X et al. (2015). Assessment of climatically suitable area for Syrmaticus reevesii under climate change. Endangered Species Research, 28: 19-31.
- Feng, X and M Papeş. (2015). Ecological niche modelling confirms potential north-east range expansion of the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) in the USA. Journal of Biogeography, 42: 803-807.
biodiversity informatics
How to effectively control the quality of biodiversity data?
How to synthesize the big-data of biodiversity?
How to produce robust range maps for all plants on Earth?
BIENdata.org, a biodiversity database for plant geographic distributions, functional traits, and range maps
- Feng, X et al. GridDER: grid detection and evaluation in R. Ecological Informatics (in revision). preprint: https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/3752/
- Park, DS, Feng, X et al. (2023) The colonial legacy of herbaria. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 1059–1068
- Feng, X et al. (2022) A review of the heterogeneous landscape of biodiversity databases: opportunities and challenges for a synthesized biodiversity knowledge base. Global Ecology and Biogeography. DOI: 10.1111/geb.13497
- Boyle, BL, et al. (including X Feng) (2022) Geographic name resolution service: a tool for the standardization and indexing of world political division names, with applications to species distribution modeling. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268162.
- Park,DS, Y Xie, HT Thammavong, R Tulaiha, X Feng. (2022) Artificial Hotspot Occurrence Inventory (AHOI). Journal of Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14543
methodology of ecological niche modeling (and SDM)
How does novel environmental conditions affect model transferability?
What is the effect of collinearity shift on model transfer?
How to improve the reproducibility of ecological models?
How to incorporate physiology in improving model accuracy during model extrapolation?
How to incorporate dispersal in the modeling process?
↗ overestimation of the ecological niche
- Chen, X, Liang, Y, Feng, X. Quantifying uncertainties of ecological forecasting under climate change. Global Ecology and Biogeography (in revision). preprint: https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/4738/
- Feng, X. (2023) A test of species’ mobility hypothesis in ecological niche modeling. Journal of Biogeography, 50:1955–1966.
- Peterson, AT et al. (including X Feng) (2022). ENM2020: a free online course and set of resources on modeling species’ niches and distributions”. Biodiversity Informatics. DOI: 10.17161/bi.v17i.15016.
- Zurell, D et al. (including X Feng) (2020). A standard protocol for describing species distribution models. Ecography. DOI: 10.1111/ecog.04960.
- Feng, X et al. (2019). Integrating physiology and ecological niche modeling through Bayesian analysis: a case study of zebra mussel’s upper thermal limit. Ecography, DOI: 10.1111/ecog.04627
- Feng, X et al. (2019). A checklist for maximizing reproducibility of ecological niche models. Nature Ecology & Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-019-0972-5
- Feng, X et al. (2019). Collinearity in ecological niche modeling: confusions and challenges. Ecology & Evolution, DOI: 10.1002/ece3.5555
- Qiao, H, X Feng et al. (2018). An evaluation of transferability of ecological niche models. Ecography, DOI: 10.1111/ecog.03986.
- Feng, X and M Papeş. (2017). Can incomplete knowledge of species’ physiology facilitate ecological niche modelling? A case study with virtual species. Diversity and Distributions, 23: 1157–1168.
- Feng, X and M Papeş. (2017). Physiological limits in an ecological niche modeling framework: a case study of water temperature and salinity constraints of freshwater bivalves invasive in USA. Ecological Modelling, 346: 48-57.
ecoclimate teleconnection
How does forest die-off impact the ecology and economics in remote areas?
What is the structure and strength of ecoclimate teleconnection?
What are the implications for land management given the network of teleconnections?
↗ networks of tele-connected NEON regions (Lopez-Hoffman et al. in prep)
↗ example of ecoclimate teleconnection: forest die-off in one NEON region (Pacific Southwest) impacts crop production in another NEON region (Prairie Peninsula)
- Feng, X et al. (2023) Distance decay and directional diffusion of ecoclimate teleconnections driven by regional-scale tree die-off. Environmental Research Letters. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/acff0d