WANG Yue

Profile

Yue Wang, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Master advisor

email：wangyue25@mail.sysu.edu.cn

Education and Working Experience

2021-present  Associate Professor  School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University

2017-2021  Postdoc  Department of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America

2013-2017  Ph.D.  Department of Geography,University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States of America

2011-2013  Master  Department of Geography,University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States of America

2007-2011  B.Sc.  College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, China   

Research Interests

Understanding how organisms respond to environmental change is a central challenge in ecology and conservation science. Species, biomes, and ecosystems are not static; they shift, adapt, and sometimes collapse in response to both natural climate fluctuations and human activities. Examining these dynamics over long timescales provides critical insights into resilience, thresholds, and patterns of reorganization in the natural world.

My research focuses particularly on plant assemblages and their responses to climate change and anthropogenic pressures during the last 20,000 years, a period that encompasses the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present interglacial. This epoch is especially informative, as it captures dramatic warming events, large-scale habitat shifts, species migrations, and the accelerating influence of human land use. By tracing how plant communities reorganized across diverse landscapes, we can better understand the drivers of biodiversity change and anticipate potential future trajectories under ongoing global change.

To investigate these questions, I draw on interdisciplinary methods, including paleoecological approaches such as fossil pollen and macrofossil analyses, as well as ecological modeling techniques that reconstruct past distributions and simulate possible responses to environmental stressors. Integrating these lines of evidence makes it possible to link ecological processes across temporal and spatial scales, shedding light on both the vulnerability and adaptability of ecosystems in the face of climatic and human-induced pressures.

Research Fundings

National Natural Science Foundation of China (Youth Program)“The influences from ancient human activities on the vegetation during the late Holocene in the West Liao River region”   2025.1-2027.12

Selected Publications

*Corresponding author

Wang, Y.*, Pineda-Munoz, S., McGuire, J.L. 2023. Plants maintain climate fidelity in the face of dynamic climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(7): e2201946119. Plants maintain climate fidelity in the face of dynamic climate change | PNAS 

Wang, Y.*, Widga, C., Graham, R.W., McGuire, J. L., Porter, W., Wårlind, D., Williams, J.W. 2021. Caught in a bottleneck: habitat losses for woolly mammoth in central North America and ice-free corridor during the last deglaciation. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 30(2): 527-542. Caught in a bottleneck: Habitat loss for woolly mammoths in central North America and the ice‐free corridor during the last deglaciation - Wang - 2021 - Global Ecology and Biogeography - Wiley Online Library

Wang, Y.*, Shipley, B. R., Lauer, D. A., Pineau, R., McGuire, J.L. 2020. Plant biomes demonstrate that landscape resilience today is the lowest it has been since end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions. Global Change Biology, 26(10): 5914-5927. Plant biomes demonstrate that landscape resilience today is the lowest it has been since end‐Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions - Wang - 2020 - Global Change Biology - Wiley Online Library

Wang, Y.*, Goring, S. J., McGuire, J. L. 2019. Bayesian ages for pollen records since the last glaciation in North America. Scientific Data, 6(1): 1-8. Bayesian ages for pollen records since the last glaciation in North America | Scientific Data (nature.com)

Wang, Y.*, Porter, W., Mathewson, P., Miller, P., Graham, R. Williams, J.W. 2018. Mechanistic modeling of environmental drivers of woolly mammoth carrying capacity declines on St. Paul Island. Ecology, 99(12): 2721-2730. Mechanistic modeling of environmental drivers of woolly mammoth carrying capacity declines on St. Paul Island - Wang - 2018 - Ecology - Wiley Online Library

Wang, Y.*, Heintzman, P. D., Newsom, L., Bigelow, N. H., Wooller, M. J., Shapiro, B., Williams, J. W. 2017. The southern coastal Beringian land bridge: cryptic refugium or pseudo refugium for woody plants during the Last Glacial Maximum? Journal of Biogeography, 44(7): 1559-1571. The southern coastal Beringian land bridge: cryptic refugium or pseudorefugium for woody plants during the Last Glacial Maximum? - Wang - 2017 - Journal of Biogeography - Wiley Online Library

Wang, Y.*, Gill, J., Marsicek, J., Dierking, A., Shuman, B., Williams, J. W. 2016. Pronounced variations in Fagus grandifolia abundances in the Great Lakes region during the Holocene. The Holocene, 26(4): 578-591. Pronounced variations in Fagus grandifolia abundances in the Great Lakes region during the Holocene - Yue Wang, Jacquelyn L. Gill, Jeremiah Marsicek, Anna Dierking, Bryan Shuman, John W Williams, 2016 (sagepub.com)

Pineda-Munoz, S.*, Wang, Y., Lyons, S. K., Tóth, A. B., McGuire, J. L. 2021. Mammal species occupy different climates following the expansion of human impacts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(2): e1922859118.

Lawing, A. M.*, Blois, J. L., Maguire, K. C., Goring, S. J., Wang, Y., McGuire, J. L.* 2021. Occupancy models reveal regional differences in detectability and improve relative abundance estimations in fossil pollen assemblages. Quaternary Science Reviews, 253: 106747.

Lou, H., Wang, P., Yang, S.*, Hao, F., Ren, X., Wang, Y., Shi, L., Wang, J. and Gong, T. 2020. Combining and comparing an unmanned aerial vehicle and multiple remote sensing satellites to calculate long-term river discharge in an ungauged water source region on the Tibetan Plateau. Remote Sensing, 12(13): 2155.

Nichols, R.*, Vollmers, C., Newsom, L., Wang, Y., Heintzman, P., Leighton, M., Green, R., Shapiro, B.* 2018. Minimizing polymerase biases in metabarcoding. Molecular Ecology Resources, 18(5): 927-939.

Wooller, M.*, Saulnier-Talbot, E., Potter, B., Belmecheri, S., Bigelow, N., Choy, K., Cwynar, L., Davies, K., Graham, R., Kurek, J., Langdon, P., Medeiros, A., Rawcliffe, R., Wang, Y., Williams, J.W. 2018. A new terrestrial palaeoenvironmental record from the Bering Land Bridge and context for human dispersal. Royal Society Open Science, 5(6): 180145.

Graham, R. W.*, Belmecheri, S., Choy, K., Cullerton, B., Davies, L. J., Froese, D., Heintzman, P. D., Hritz, C., Kapp, J. D., Newsom, L., Rawcliffe, R., Saulnier-Talbot, E., Shapiro, B., Wang, Y., Williams, J. W., Wooller, M. J. 2016. Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(33): 9310-9314.

Awards

Guangdong Zhujiang Talent Program – Young Top Talent, 2024

Deevey Award Honorable Mention, ESA, 2017

Cozzarelli Prize, PNAS, 2016

University of Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011

Lin Chao Geography Fellowship，Peking University，2010