Chuliang Song

Amazing opportunity!

I am seeking a postdoc for my group at UCLA. We work at the intersection of population genetics x microbiome (garud.eeb.ucla.edu). If interested, please message me!

(A) A conceptual diagram of interspecific and intraspecific higher-order interactions among annual plants. (B) Conceptual diagrams (along with pictures of actual annual plants) of two different spatial arrangements of competitors to manipulate the relative frequecy of inter to intraspecific higher-order interactions.

Happy to share a new preprint! W/ @zachgold.bsky.social, Haylee Oyler, Jonathan Levine and @nathanjbkraft.bsky.social. We use a spatially explicit experimental design to ask:

do higher-order interactions structure the dynamics of annual plant communities?

Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Label invariance: a guiding principle for ecological models https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.15.664968v1

Last year, I joined a brilliant group of researchers for a 3-week deep dive into host–microbe systems. Each week explored a different theme, led by inspiring lecturers.

I’m excited to share that videos of their talks — along with presentations by several team members — are now on YouTube:

Assembly Graph as the Rosetta Stone of Ecological Assembly This paper introduces the assembly graph as an integrative lens to unify ecological assembly theories across dynamical, informational, and probabilistic approaches. In addition to theory, it also pre....

This excellent article by @clsong.bsky.social‬ synthesizes research on the Assembly Graph, a useful conceptual & methodological tool to understand the dynamic assembly of microbial communities and multispecies coexistence.
enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

So excited to finally read this paper on parametrizing metacommunities! It's a true breakthrough. I've been looking forward to it since the fantastic talk at APS March Meeting.

Eukaryotic composition across seasons and social groups in the gut microbiota of wild baboons - Animal Microbiome Background Animals coexist with complex microbiota, including bacteria, viruses, and eukaryotes (e.g., fungi, protists, and helminths). While high-throughput sequencing is commonly used to characteriz...

Excited to share our new article exploring the eukaryotic diversity and composition in the gut microbiome of wild baboons!

doi.org/10.1186/s425...

Host Competitive Asymmetries Accelerate Viral Evolution in a Microbe–Virus Coevolutionary System - Liaghat - 2025 - Ecology Letters - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧵The RELab opens! We explore how diverse ecologies cope with fluctuations while maintaining long-term integrity in space and time. Our motto is: ‘Everything is moving’. Not interested in asymptotics: transient dynamics reigns everywhere, every time. A supertransient thread with an arrow of time:

Genomics of host–microbiome interactions in humans Nature Reviews Genetics - In this Review, Ferretti et al. discuss advances in our understanding of interactions between the human genome and the microbiome, including the effects of the microbiome...

Interested in microbiome GWAS and heritability studies? Check out our new Review in Nature Reviews Genetics! We explore key findings, challenges, and future directions of the field.
rdcu.be/epoRR

@blekhman.bsky.social @sambhawa.bsky.social and Dr. Kelsey Johnson.

Do you want to know if species interactions are more a tool or a limitation when communities try to cope with global change? Check my talk tomorrow at 13:30 in TSB-7. #SIBECOLAEET2025 @eco-aeet.bsky.social @sibecol.bsky.social @sibecol-aeet-25.bsky.social

How do ecological communities respond to pulse perturbations (e.g. storms, wildfires)? We have a solid theory for stable fixed points, but what about cycles, transients, or chaos? In this preprint, we introduce a unified framework for these nonequilibrium cases. 1/7
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Microbial communities can harbor many species that do not coexist in pairs, yet can coexist in the full community. Here we provide the mathematical foundations of emergent coexistence, and explain why it can't be predicted from pairwise tests www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

(A) Conceptual diagram of how early-season competition induces plastic responses in focal plants. (B) Species interactions are measured across a density gradient of resident competitors with no induction, with induction from individuals of the focal species or from the resident species.

New paper w/ Jonathan Levine and @exp-evoeco.bsky.social! We induced plastic responses in annual plants through early-life competition. These responses tended to make subsequent species interactions stronger and coexistence less likely.
Link: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

How can we understand ecosystem dynamics using information theory? Using Shannon's entropy, this paper by Chuliang Song gives a clever introduction to IT within the context of assembly graphs. @longcy.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social @blaividiella.bsky.social
www.clsong.com/assets/pdf/s...

So emotional seeing my first-ever teaching evaluations! 😭 Creating all the materials from scratch was tough, but incredibly rewarding.

I put a lot of thought into what students need in the AI era—sharing the complete class materials here in case they're helpful: clsong.github.io/EEB_C234/01_...

FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY GROUP Exciting lab news! In September 2025, the lab will move to the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University  in Melbourne, Australia. We will keep a presence at the Gulbenkian Institute for...

Very exciting news! In Sept 2025, I will move my lab to the School of Biological Sciences @monashbiol.bsky.social at #Monash University in Melbourne!

I am recruiting #PhD students to work on #ecological & #evolutionary dynamics of #phytoplankton #communities – find out more here giuliaghedini.com

Just out:
A geometric approach to beta diversity

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Led by the brilliant
@clsong.bsky.social & Muyang Lu.

Thrilled to share our new paper "A geometric approach to beta diversity" in Ecological Monographs. We propose a fresh perspective to rethink beta diversity and its measurement.

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecm.70008

Four #SPLASHY talks from the lab for #APSphysics March meeting next week at Anaheim, from starfish embryos to robotic active matter - looking forward! #ApsDsoft #ApsDbio #PRX_Life

Great news that increases funding levels and the number of awards and opens up PhD and postdoc awards to non-Canadians! Currently recruiting an MSc and a PhD in my lab - see www.tessgrainger.ca

The determination of leaf size on the basis of developmental traits - Zeqing Ma, Thomas N. Buckley, Lawren Sack - New Phytologist @tombuckleylab.bsky.social

t.co/EFgmQo1qWy

Excited to see this paper from Mary Van Dyke out in press- she measures how rainfall manipulations alter the timing of the life cycles of California annual plants, and explore implications for species coexistence. Thanks to Sedgwick UCNRS Reserve for facilitating her research! #AJB

A Continuum From Positive to Negative Interactions Drives Plant Species' Performance in a Diverse Community We explored the patterns of species performance in a real-world community, dependent on pairwise and higher-order interactions with species belonging to the same and other trophic levels (plant, herb....

Yayy 🌱🪲🐝🐌- A list of stellar ecologists and myself showed that (1) species interactions can be summarised at the guild level, except for a few critical species, (2) they occur along a continuum from positive-to-negative, and (3) they have relatively weak strength except between plants!

How wildlife survives after wildfires The biggest danger for wildlife is the aftermath. But many species have evolved to rely on the opportunities created by others.

I gave an interview to the BBC at midnight while the #LAfires were raging outside and I couldn't sleep. Turned into one of the most thorough and well-researched articles on wildlife and wildfire I've had the pleasure of contributing to.

Incredible work led by Jeff! As his office mate, I’ve seen firsthand the dedication and rigor he’s put into this project, ensuring the analysis is both thorough and widely applicable. Couldn’t recommend it more!

Tiny but mighty? Overview of a decade of research on nectar bacteria An emerging focus of research at the intersection of botany, zoology, and microbiology is the study of floral nectar as a microbial habitat, referred to as the nectar microbiome, which can alter plan...

New review article in @newphyt.bsky.social on nectar bacteria--their evolutionary origin, dispersal mode, effects on nectar chemistry and plant–animal interactions, community assembly, agricultural applications, and their use as model systems in ecological research

doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Inference of the demographic histories and selective effects of human gut commensal microbiota over the course of human history Abstract. Despite the importance of gut commensal microbiota to human health, there is little knowledge about their evolutionary histories, including their

We are thrilled to share that our paper entitled "Inference of the demographic histories and selective effects of human gut commensal microbiota over the course of human history" is officially out in MBE! academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

So happy to hear that! Thank you