My Profile

Hi, I am Shijia Peng (彭莳嘉). I currently work at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University. I am a post-doc fellow with professor Charles Davis and professor Aaron M. Ellison, focusing on the phenological responses of plants to climate changes. I obtained my Ph. D degree from Sun Yat-sen University in 2018. And then I am a post-doc working with professor Zhiheng Wang, Peking University, focusing on the impacts of climate and land-cover changes on woody species in China (2019.01-2022.03).

Climate Changes

Biological Invasions

Land-cover changes

Biodiversity & Macroecology & Conservation Biology

We are experiencing a severe biodiversity crisis. To better understand global biodiversity patterns under the Anthropocene, and how future conservation networks can be optimized to achieve global conservation goals (e.g. CBD 2050 and post-2020) in the future, it is necessary to integrate different sources of ecological, biological and environmental information.

My research is motivated by a need for a better understanding of rules of biodiversity for conservation during the current era of global changes. My research is interdisciplinary, integrating tools and perspectives of macroecology, conservation biology, species distribution modelings, meta-analyses and phylogenetics (see more on research page).

During my post-doc stage in Peking University, I mainly used macroecological theory, combined with phylogenetic comparative methods and conservation planning techniques to explore how climate and land-use change affect species distributions. I mapped the geographical biodiversity patterns of woody species under current and projected future environmental conditions in China. Specifically, I studied the latitudinal patterns in the thermal tolerance, and vulnerability of woody species under projected climate warming in 2050s and 2070s (Peng et al. 2021, Ecography). I assessed the woody species that will be threatened by the 2070s in China and identified priority areas for woody species conservation using various biodiversity facets (Peng et al. 2022, Journal of Applied Ecology). I also completed a project recently investigating the impacts of climate and land-use change on tree of life in China, assessing the effectiveness of the existing protected areas for conserving evolutionary history of woody species (Peng et al. 2022 Proceedings of the royal society B).