People | Isbell Biodiversity Lab

Current lab members

Forest Isbell is an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior and a Fellow at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

His research considers how human activities are changing biodiversity, and how changes in biodiversity cause changes in ecosystem functioning, stability, and services. Many of his studies focus on plant diversity in grasslands and forests. He also reintroduced bison to an oak savanna. His research has been published in top scientific journals and he has been recognized as a Clarivate highly cited researcher each year since 2018.

He teaches an undergraduate Ecology course at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve and a graduate course on Scientific Writing.

He has served as the director of the MnDRIVE Environment program (2022-2023), the associate director of Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (2015-2022), guest editor at PNAS, and on the editorial boards of Ecology Letters, Oecologia, and other journals.

He is actively involved in science-policy efforts, currently serving as a lead author of the second global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2025-2028) and an author of the First National Nature Assessment of the U.S. (2024-2026). Previously he served as an author of expert information documents for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity's Global Biodiversity Framework (2020, 2022) and a lead author of previous IPBES assessments (2015-2018).

Former lab members

Dr. Qianna Xu was a postdoctoral researcher in our lab group. She is now at the Washington State Department of Ecology. She a community ecologist broadly interested in understanding what determines ecological stability. Her doctoral research combined meta-analyses, grassland experiments, and laboratory microcosm experiments to study the influence of biotic processes and abiotic factors, including biodiversity, species interactions, and environmental disturbances, on the dynamics and stability of ecological communities in the face of global change. Her postdoctoral work focuses on understanding how long-term invariability depends on its short-term resistance and resilience components and the roles of species traits and interactions in determining multi-dimensional ecosystem stability. Read more about her work on her Google Scholar profile.

Dr. Neha Mohanbabu was a postdoctoral researcher in our lab group. She is now a postdoc at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Neha is a community ecologist interested in understanding responses of plants and plant-interactions to global change drivers. For her graduate research, she combined theoretical and empirical methods to understand the influence of multiple resource limitation on plant-herbivore interactions in terrestrial systems that have coevolved with large mammalian herbivores. Her postdoctoral work explored temporal variation and long-term impacts of manipulating biodiversity, CO2 and nitrogen inputs in grassland ecosystems, in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Hobbie and Dr. Peter Reich, using the BioCON experiment at Cedar Creek. Read more about her work on her website.

Dr. Karen Castillioni was a postdoc in our lab. She is now a data scientist. Her research interests include community dynamics and how they are influenced by global environmental changes. She is also interested in understanding how local dynamics ultimately influence larger spatial scales, such as ecosystem functions and processes. Her graduate research focused on the impacts of invasive species in Brazilian grasslands, and the impacts of climate change in mixed-grass prairies of the U.S. Southern Great Plains. In our lab group, she: 1) tested the impacts of habitat fragmentation and seed dispersal on grassland biodiversity and productivity, and 2) used remote sensing to scale-up the strength of biodiversity effects on ecosystem productivity, from local to landscape scales. Read more about her work on her website.

Dr. Amy Churchill was a postdoc in our lab. She is now a faculty member at Binghamton University. Amy's research focuses on the characteristics of plants and their communities which drive ecosystem responses to global change such as rising CO₂, climate extremes or nitrogen deposition. Her work spans community and ecosystem ecology, and past projects have included large-scale field experimental manipulations as well as glasshouse projects in the US and Australia. Her postdoctoral work in our group was funded through the USDA AFRI NIFA program, and examined how shifts in net plant community interactions associated with grassland succession may influence ecosystem resistance and resilience from drought. Read more about her work on her website.

Past visitors

Akira S MORI was a visiting scholar in our lab. He is a biodiversity expert, specializing in understanding its causes and functional consequences in terrestrial ecosystems. He has conducted extensive fieldwork worldwide, including northern forests in Japan and the high arctic tundra in Canada. As an editor for seven scientific journals, he has made contributions to the field. Also, his work on modeling studies to quantify the magnitude of global biodiversity loss has further advanced the understanding of this pressing issue. His expertise extends to national and international levels, with roles in the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) and contributions to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). He is also a member of the Young Academy of Japan (YAJ), promoting multidisciplinary dialogue for the future of academia. His research and policy engagements demonstrate his dedication to biodiversity preservation and societal progress.

Tonjock Rosemary Kinge was a visiting scholar in our lab. She is an Associate Professor of Mycology and Phytopathology and chair in the Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Science in the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. Her research is focused on fungi diversity, fungi phylogenetics, fungi pathology, mushroom science, ethnomycology, biodiversity conservation and multidisciplinary studies. Rosemary is interested in studying fungi biodiversity in different ecosystems, documenting threats to fungi biodiversity and carrying out conservation measures, investigating plant-fungi biodiversity and conservation, and assessing the mycobiome in plants and soil. Rosemary also studies how global environmental changes such as habitat loss, fragmentation and climate change are driving changes in plant-fungi biodiversity and ecosystems. She is also interested in studying conservation policies and their implementation. Read more about her work on ResearchGate.