Zihui Wang

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of British Columbia

About

Climate change is impacting our ecosystems, and small organisms like insects and microbes are often the first to respond due to their short generation times. These rapid responses are driving some of the most pressing challenges such as emerging diseases, pest outbreaks, and biodiversity loss.

I’m interested in understanding how microbes and insects respond to climate change and amplify its impacts on ecosystems. Through both field observations and controlled experiments, I investigate fundamental questions in community ecology and macroecology, such as the biogeography of plant-associated microbes, the climatic drivers of major plant diseases and pests, and how microbes and insects influence plant diversity and distribution in a changing world.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Davies Lab at the Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia.

Interests

Plant-associated microbes
Community assembly
Climate change impacts
Macroecology and biogeography
Disease and pests

Education

PhD in Biology, 2019 - 2023
Université du Québec à Montréal
MSc in Ecology, 2015 - 2018
Sun Yat-Sen University
BSc in Biology, 2011 - 2015
Sun Yat-Sen University

Research

Predict climate change-driven risks of forest disease and pests

Plant pathogens and insect pests present significant threats to forest health and ecosystem function. This impact is likely exacerbated by climate change; however, forecasting the climate change-driven risks of pests remains challenging due to the inherent variability of climate impacts among regions, tree species and pest types. My research contributes to addressing this variability by incorporating the thermal mismatch between plants and pests in a Bayesian hierarchical model. We show that high-latitude forests and cold-adapted plants are likley more susceptible under climate change and develop the first atlas of future pest risks for North American forests.

Community assembly and biogeography of plant-associated microbes

Plants host diverse and dynamic microbial communities that play key roles in plant health and ecosystem function. As an inherently multidisciplinary field, plant microbiology has recently gained prominence in global change research. Understanding how microbial communities assemble locally and distribute across larger spatial scales is vital for predicting the impacts of global change on both microbes and plant health. My research explores the diversity and biogeographical patterns of plant-associated microbes, both above and belowground, to address fundamental questions in the macroecology of microes and offer insights into their responses to global change.

Impacts of insect and microbe on plant species diversity and distribution

Insect herbivores and many microbes, including pathogens and mutualists, play crucial roles in maintaining plant diversity. Theories such as the Janzen-Connell hypothesis predict that herbivory and disease pressure increase with higher conspecific density. While evidence supports these patterns, recent studies reveal significant variation across plant species. My research examines this enemy pressure across conspecific density gradients for multiple plant species, contributing to a better understanding of the inconsistent impacts of herbivores across plant species.