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Ongoing Projects
Montane mammals responses and adaptations to climate change
Montane biotas are particularly vulnerable to climate-driven extinctions. Human-induced warming is causing uneven rates of range contraction and expansion, leading to novel montane community assemblages and mountaintop extinctions. Understanding patterns of modern range shifts is essential for forecasting novel community networks and the loss and gain of functional diversity. Our international team will assemble historical and contemporary ecological and genomic data for mammals along the tropical. We will investigate climate change-associated shifts in genomic, population, and community structure, and explore similarities and idiosyncrasies in responses across functional guilds, phylogenetic taxa, and montane systems. This multi-functional approach will reveal groups and regions most vulnerable to climate alterations to guide conservation efforts.
Hengduan Mountains, China
Revealing historical plant–animal interactions with eDNA: a framework for analysis and eDNA-compatible curation
Plant–pollinator interactions are fundamental drivers of ecosystem functioning, yet remain poorly documented as conventional techniques (e.g. direct observations, pollen analyses) capture only a fraction of floral visitors. eDNA metabarcoding now enables the capture of floral visitors through a single, cost-efficient lab workflow. Our team will extend novel eDNA techniques to herbarium and zoological specimens, leveraging historical collections to reconstruct ecological networks and unlock past pollination dynamics. This approach will expand the temporal scope of eDNA-based analyses and demonstrate the continued importance of natural history museums in addressing global biodiversity crises. Our project will also establish protocols for curating eDNA-compatible materials in plant and animal collections, positioning FMNH to better support rapid biodiversity assessments amid accelerating ecological change.
Evolution of nectarivory in bats: a biogeography, morphology, and metagenomics perspective
Nectar-feeding bats represent one of the most remarkable examples of dietary specialization in mammals, having evolved to rely on nectar at least seven times across their evolutionary history. This repeated evolution has led to striking diversity in their morphology, behavior, and sensory systems, making them an exceptional model for studying adaptation and diversification. Despite their ecological importance as pollinators and their wide distribution across the Neotropics, Paleotropics, and Australia, nectarivorous bats remain underexplored, particularly with respect to how coevolution with plants or other environmental pressures have shaped their evolutionary history. This project investigates the biogeography, morphology, and dietary strategies of nectar-feeding bats to uncover the evolutionary and ecological processes that drive their diversity. By integrating analyses of spatial distribution, cranial morphology, sensory adaptations, and community-level diet comparisons, we aim to shed new light on how nectarivory evolved multiple times in bats and how it has influenced their role in ecosystems worldwide.
Winds of Change: Chicago's Urban Impact on Mammalian Evolution
Evolution usually takes place on a millions-of-years timescale. However, human-induced environmental changes are causing microevolutionary adaptive responses in mammals, leading to phenotypic divergence on a contemporary scale. Urbanization is one of the key drivers of rapid evolutionary changes, but prior studies have focused mostly on body size variation and based conclusions on a limited time series. The Field Museum mammal collection was established in 1894 and hosts specimens systematically collected in the Chicagoland region over the last 120 years. This temporally extensive collection offers a unique opportunity to assess the influence of land-use changes on complex morphological traits. As the third largest city in the United States, we expect that Chicago’s urban development over the last century has caused adaptive changes in traits associated with resource use and habitat interaction. To address this hypothesis, this project aims to quantify temporal changes in morphology and diet of mammal species in Chicagoland, and relate them to urbanization, land use, and climate change. By comparing species with distinct lifestyles we can assess how pervasive the human influence is on mammal contemporary evolution.
Related publications:
Feijó A*, Stringer A*, Bian L, Smith S. 2025. Limited cranial shifts in city-dwelling rodents after a century of urbanization. Integrative and Comparative Biology. In press.
Timing and mode of origination of the Caribbean biota
How modern and past biodiversity originated and accumulated over time and space is one of the most active research areas in evolutionary ecology and biogeography. Island systems such as the Caribbean have been of particular interest because of their high species richness and endemism threatened by human activities. The study of the Caribbean biota was also fundamental in establishing the modern theoretical framework of island biography and how evolutionary processes like adaptative radiation unfold. However, the origin, evolution, and accumulation of this biota since the formation of the islands remain poorly understood. This project applies a holistic approach to understand how biodiversity hotspots originate on islands using Phylogenetic Comparative Methods (PCMs) across multiple vertebrate clades from the Caribbean combined with new paleontological data from Paleogene and Neogene.
Past Projects
Mammalian diversification in the Qinghai-Tibetan biodiversity hotspots
Asia is one of the richest continents in species diversity, including fourteen of the global biodiversity hotspots. Large part of its biodiversity is closely linked to the Cenozoic geodiversity, especially the active mountain building resulting in the formation of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and the surrounding mountains (Himalayas, and Hengduan). Their orogeny has drastically changed the surrounding climate and vegetation and shaped the pre sent-day biodiversity in Asia. In this project, we will explore the tempo and mode of range evolution of Asian mammals to infer how and when the diversity across regions and mountain hotspots assembled. We are particularly interested in testing whether periods of intense tectonism, such as orogeny and continental collisions, and marked climatic changes are related to peaks in diversification and major dispersal events shaping the present-day regional mammal diversity in Asia. This project was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Related publications:
Feijó A*, Ge D*, Wen Z*, Cheng J, Xia L, Patterson BD, Yang Q. 2022. Mammalian diversification bursts and biotic turnovers are synchronous with Cenozoic geoclimatic events in Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(49): e2207845119.
Wen Z*, Feijó A*, Ke J, He X, Cheng J, Ge D, Tian T, Xia L, Wu Y, Ran J, Yang Q. 2022. Altitudinal dispersal process drives community assembly of montane small mammals. Ecography. e06318. pdf
Ge D*, Feijó A*, Wen Z*, Lissovky A, Zhang S, Cheng J, Yan C, Mu D, Wu X, Xia L, Yang Q. 2022. Ancient introgression underlying the unusual mito-nuclear discordance and coat phenotypic variation in the Moupin pika. Diversity and Distributions. 28: 2593-2609. pdf
Elevational patterns of Asian small mammal communities
Species distributed along mountain slopes, which experience conspicuous climatic shifts and steep vegetation changes over short geographic distances, are of particular interest for assessing how communities are structured. As altitude increases, rapid environmental changes promote spatially dynamic biotic and abiotic interactions. These combined effects of contrasting climatic variables over short distances result in markedly heterogeneous vegetation zonation, in some cases resembling tropical-temperate forest transitions. In collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, our projects have focused on elevation patterns of small mammal communities across China.
Related publications:
Wen Z, Cai T, Wu Y, Feijó A, Xia L, Cheng J, Peng X, Zhang Q, Zhang Z, Ran J, Ge D, Yang Q. 2022. Environmental drivers of sympatric mammalian species compositional turnover in giant panda nature reserves: Implications for conservation. Science of The Total Environment. 806(4):150944.
Wen Z, Feijó A, Cheng J, Du Y, Ge D, Xia L, Yang Q. 2021. Explaining mammalian abundance and elevational range size with body mass and niche characteristics. Journal of Mammalogy. 102(1): 13-27.
Wen Z, Ge D, Feijó A, Du Y, Cheng J, Sun J, Qang Y, Xia L, Yang Q. 2021. Varying support for abundance-centre and congeneric competition hypotheses along elevational transects of mammals. Journal of Biogeography. 48(3):616-627.
Du Y, Fan L, Xu Z, Wen Z, Cai T, Feijó A, Hu J, Lei F, Yang Q, Qiao H. 2021. A multi-faceted comparative perspective on elevational beta-diversity: the patterns and their causes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 288 (1949): 20210343. pdf
Sun J, Wen Z, Feijó A, Cheng J, Wang Y, Li S, Ge D, Xia L, Yang Q. 2020. Elevation patterns and critical environmental drivers of the taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of small mammals in a karst mountain area. Ecology and Evolution. 20(19): 10899-10911.
Phenotypic evolution in high-altitude mammals
Species adapted to harsh environments often display multilevel, interdependent modifications—from genes to life-history traits—allowing them to cope with physical and biotic selection. Living at high altitudes is a great challenge for most endothermic animals given the low oxygen levels, cold temperatures, and high solar radiation. Notably, high elevations combine some of the stressful conditions present in subterranean (chronic hypoxia) and desert (reduced food supply, short growing season, high predator exposure) environments. While numerous studies have investigated genetic pathways and physiological changes among high-elevation organisms, only a few have assessed adaptive responses in traits associated with resource use (i.e. beaks, jaws, skulls) among montane organisms. In this project, we explore skull adaptations to altitude, seeking overall phenotypic patterns across groups of mammals.
Related publications:
Feijó A*, Ge D*, Wen Z, Xia L, Yang, Q. 2020. Divergent adaptations in resource-use traits explain how pikas thrive on the roof of the world. Functional Ecology. 34(9): 1826–1838. pdf
Feijó A, Wen Z, Cheng J, Ge D, Xia L, Yang Q. 2019. Divergent selection along elevational gradients promotes genetic and phenotypic disparities among small mammals populations. Ecology and Evolution. 9(12): 7080–7095. pdf
Revealing the Caatinga mammal diversity
The Caatinga, the largest tropical dry forest in South America, is among the least-studied biomes in Brazil. Since 2010, we have investigated the community structure, diversity, ecological dynamics, and conservation challenges of its mammal fauna, with a particular focus on bats and armadillos.
Related publications:
Feijó A, Rocha PA. 2017. Morcegos da Estação Ecológica Aiuaba, Ceará, Nordeste do Brasil: Uma unidade de Proteção Integral na Caatinga. Mastozoologia Neotropical. 24(2): 333–346.
Alves RRN, Feijó A, Barboza RRD, Souto WMS, Fernandes-Ferreira H, Cordeiro-Estrela P, Langguth A. 2016. Game mammals of the Caatinga biome. Etnobiology and Conservation. 5: 1–51.
Feijó A, Garbino GST, Campos BATP, Rocha PA, Ferrari SF, Langguth A. 2015. Distribution on Tolypeutes Illiger, 1831 (Xenarthra: Cingulata) with Comments on Its Biogeography and Conservation. Zoological Science. 32: 77–87.
Feijó A, Rocha PA, Mikalauskas J, Ferrari SF. 2015. Macrophyllum macrophyllum (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) in the Brazilian caatinga scrublands: River basins as potencial routes of dispersal in xeric ecosystems. Mastozoologia Neotropical. 22: 163–169.
Gurgel-Filho NM, Feijó A, Langguth A. 2015. Pequenos Mamíferos do Ceará (Marsupiais, Morcegos e roedores Sigmodontíneos) com Discussão Taxonômica de Algumas espécies. Revista Nordestina de Biologia. 23: 3–150.
Fernandes-Ferreira H, Gurgel-Filho NM, Feijó A, Mendonca SV, Alves RRN, Langguth A. 2015. Non-volant mammals from Baturité Ridge, Ceará state, Northeast Brazil. Check List. 11: 1630–1637.
Rocha, P.A., Feijó, A., Pedroso, M. A., Ferrari, S.F. 2015. First record of the big free-tailed bat, Nyctinomops macrotis (Chiroptera, Molossidae), for the semi-arid caatinga scrublands of northeastern Brazil. Mastozoología Neotropical. 22: 195–200.
Rocha PA, Feijó A, Dias D, Mikalauskas JS, Ruiz-Esparza J, Ferrari SF. 2014. Major extension of the known range of the capixaba nectar-feeding bat, Dryadonycteris capixaba (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae). Is this rare species widely distributed in eastern Brazil? Mastozoología Neotropical. 21: 361–366.
Filho EL, Feijó A, Rocha PA. 2014. Opportunistic predation of bats trapped in mist nets by Leptodactylus vastus (Anura: Leptodactylidae). Biotemas. 27: 205–208.
Feijó A, Langguth A. 2013. Mamíferos de Médio e Grande Porte do Nordeste do Brasil: Distribuição e Taxonomia, com Descrição de Novas Espécies. Revista Nordestina de Biologia. 22: 3–227.
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