Michael Belitz
he/him/his
Assistant Professor
Interests: Global change biology; Quantitative Ecology; Conservation Biology; Urban Ecology; Ecoinformatics
437 Russell Labs
1630 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI 53706
Education
- PhD Zoology, University of Florida and Florida Museum of Natural History, 2023
- Dissertation: Insects in a changing world: Life history traits and thermal niche condition responses to climate change and urbanization
- M.S. Biology, Central Michigan University, 2018
- Thesis: Applying biodiversity informatics and field study approaches to the conservation of Poweshiek skipperling (Oarisma poweshiek)
- B.A. Biology & Environmental Studies, Knox College, 2014
- Honors Thesis: Assessing the invertebrate composition of reconstructed prairies
Biography
Michael Belitz is a global change biologist and eco-informatician interested in combining data science and field approaches to understand how insects and ecosystems respond to climate change, urbanization, and agricultural intensification. His work integrates diverse data sources such as museum collections, participatory science platforms, remote sensing, and images with computational tools to fill biodiversity knowledge gaps at broad spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales.
Dr. Belitz is motivated by a desire to address biodiversity loss and mitigate the consequences of anthropogenic change and insect declines on ecosystem services. Work in the lab takes an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to inform evidence-based conservation and climate adaptation efforts. Dr. Belitz is interested in developing innovative approaches to data collection to rapidly fill biodiversity data gaps. He also works to unite ecological and biodiversity data across scales and to build ecoinformatics tools that make existing biodiversity data more useful and accessible to the research community.
Specialization: Bayesian hierarchical modeling; Data integration; Phylogenetic mixed models; Spatial analysis; Lepidoptera;
Publications
Online Profiles
Recent Publications
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Systematic biology. pmid:41569029, pmc:PMC13445619, doi:10.1093/sysbio/syag005
Dragonflies and damselflies (Insecta: Odonata) are descended from what were most likely the first winged animals, which flew ~320 million years ago (Ma). They comprise ~6400 extant species distributed across all continents except Antarctica. Examination of long-standing hypotheses regarding the role of flight behavior and wing morphology in shaping the global distribution of odonates has been limited by spatial and taxonomic scope. Here, we leverage mobilized trait and distribution data derived…
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PloS one. pmid:41270053, pmc:PMC12637895, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0335856
Characterizing temporal niche is integral to understanding eco-evolutionary interactions of species, but research into the timing of species’ daily activity patterns (diel activity) has remained challenging due to data limitations. In timing their activity, organisms face trade-offs such as maximizing foraging and reproduction during favorable conditions while minimizing predation and competition. We assembled large-scale daily activity data across hundreds of butterfly species, broad geographic…
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. pmid:40758864, pmc:PMC12377735, doi:10.1073/pnas.2501340122
Insects are declining worldwide. These declines have been documented across taxonomic groups and are worrisome given ecosystem services provided by insects. Long-term data have illuminated butterfly declines across geographic regions. However, critical questions remain on how butterfly declines are distributed across species and functional groups, limiting effective conservation. Here, we show unprecedented changes in butterfly biodiversity resulting from 32 y of species levels declines…
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The Journal of animal ecology. pmid:39994832, pmc:PMC11962238, doi:10.1111/1365-2656.70007
Climate change is altering the seasonal timing of biological events across the tree of life. Phenological asynchrony has the potential to hasten population declines and disrupt ecosystem function. However, we lack broad comparisons of the degree of sensitivity to common phenological cues across multiple trophic levels. Overcoming the complexity of integrating data across trophic levels is essential for identifying spatial locations and species for which mismatches are most likely to occur. Here,…
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Ecology. pmid:39618262, doi:10.1002/ecy.4489
Urbanization in temperate climates often advances the beginning and peak of biological events due to multiple factors, especially urban heat islands. However, the effect of urbanization on insect phenology remains understudied in more tropical areas, where temperature may be a weaker phenological cue. We surveyed moths across an urban gradient in a subtropical city weekly for a year to test how impervious surface and canopy cover impact phenology at the caterpillar and adult life stages. For…
Selected Publications
- Belitz, M.W., Campbell C.J., Drum R., Leuenberger W., Morelli T.L., Nail K., Shirey V., Thogmartin W., Zipkin E.F. 2025. A case for assemblage-level conservation to address the biodiversity crisis. Nature Reviews Biodiversity. 1: 134-143
- Belitz, M.W., Larsen E.A., Hurlbert A.H., Di Cecco G.J., Neupane N., Ries L., Tingley M.W., Guralnick R.P., Youngflesh C. 2025. Potential for bird-insect phenological mismatch in a tri-trophic system. Journal of Animal Ecology. 94:717-728
- Belitz, M.W., Sawyer A., Hendrick L., Kawahara A., Guralnick R. 2024. Substantial urbanization-driven declines of larval and adult moths in a subtropical environment. Global Change Biology. 30: e17241
- Belitz M.W., Larsen E.A., Shirey V., Li D., Guralnick R.P. 2023. Phenological research based on natural history collections: practical guidelines and a Lepidopteran case study. Functional Ecology. 37: 234-24.
- Belitz, M.W., Barve V, Doby J.R., Hantak M.M., Larsen E.A., Li D., Oswald J.A., Sewnath N., Walters M., Narayani B., Earl K., Gardner N., Guralnick R., Stucky B.J. 2021. Climate drivers of adult insect activity are conditioned by life history traits. Ecology Letters. 24: 2687-2699.