Contact Information
Champaign, IL 61820
Additional Campus Affiliations
Principal Research Scientist, Stream Ecology, Illinois Natural History Survey
Research Assistant Professor, Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
Recent Publications
Cao, Y., Schartel, T. E., Houghton, D. C., Ross, J., & Infante, D. M. (2025). Evaluating machine leaning algorithms for accuracy, stability, and among-predictors discriminability in modeling species-richness across ten datasets. Ecological Informatics, 90, Article 103323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103323
Xu, M., Fang, M., Usoof, A. M., Mandrak, N. E., Chu, C., Qian, H., Cao, Y., Liu, C., Cuthbert, R. N., Li, S. P., Su, G., Tedesco, P. A., Dick, J. T. A., Wei, H., Yu, F., Shu, L., Wang, X., Mu, X., & Gu, D. (2025). Ecological similarity governs non-native fish establishment while human pressure and native diversity shape invasion richness. Science Advances, 11(32), eadw4347. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adw4347
Schartel, T. E., & Cao, Y. (2024). Background selection complexity influences Maxent predictive performance in freshwater systems. Ecological Modelling, 488, Article 110592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2023.110592
Cao, Y., & Wang, L. (2023). How to Statistically Disentangle the Effects of Environmental Factors and Human Disturbances: A Review. Water (Switzerland), 15(4), Article 734. https://doi.org/10.3390/w15040734
Dai, Q., Cao, Y., Chu, M. L., Larson, E. R., & Suski, C. D. (2023). Agricultural conservation may not help Midwestern US freshwater biodiversity in a changing climate. Science of the Total Environment, 872, Article 162143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162143