Nawal Shrestha, PhD
I earned my PhD in 2015 from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. Currently, I serve as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agriculture at Kathmandu University. Before joining Kathmandu University, I held several academic positions, including Research Associate (2023-2024) in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, Young Researcher (2019–2023) in the College of Ecology at Lanzhou University, and Postdoctoral Researcher (2015–2019) in the Institute of Ecology at Peking University. I am broadly interested in plant systematics, macroecology and conservation biology. My research focuses on investigating the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that underpin large-scale species diversity patterns and biodiversity conservation in the face of global changes.
Research Interests
I am a quantitative plant ecologist whose research seeks to understand how ecological and evolutionary processes shape plant diversity across environmental gradients and how plant communities respond to global environmental change. My work integrates large biodiversity datasets, species distribution modelling, phylogenetic approaches, and spatial analyses to address fundamental questions in terrestrial plant ecology, biogeography, and conservation.
My research is structured around four interconnected themes.
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Ecological and Evolutionary Drivers of Plant Diversity
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Biodiversity Conservation under Global Change
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Plant Invasion Ecology
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Human–Plant Interactions and Biocultural Diversity
Selected
Publications
Yang Y., Bian Z., Liu J. and Shrestha N.* (In Press) Ecological and evolutionary processes underpinning biodiversity disparities between tropical and temperate mountains. Journal of Biogeography doi: 10.1111/jbi.70299. Full Text
Shrestha N.*, Hart R., Harrison K.D., Gourguillon L. and Davis C.C.* (2025) The human fingerprint of medicinal plant species diversity. Current Biology 35 (22): 5603-5609. Full Text
Shrestha N.*, Xu X., Meng J. and Wang Z.* (2021) Vulnerabilities of protected lands in the face of climate and human footprint changes. Nature Communications 12: 1632. Full Text