About

Nyeema Harris is the Knobloch Family Associate Professor of Wildlife and Land Conservation at Yale School of the Environment. Her areas of expertise include ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity, habitat conservation, human-wildlife interaction, urban ecology, and environmental justice. Her research focuses on ecosystem conservation and resilience, biodiversity loss, and the social and cultural perspectives related to indigenous environmental knowledge and participatory science. Harris's work also emphasizes urban parks and green spaces, land use, and the impact of urbanization on wildlife and ecosystems. She has contributed to understanding how neighborhood conditions affect environmental literacy in urban youth and has been involved in studies related to urban wildlife planning, land-use designations, and the effects of climate change on biodiversity. Harris holds a PhD from North Carolina State University, an MS from The University of Montana, and a BS from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Research topics

• Ecology
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Environmental science
• Environmental resource management
• Evolutionary biology
• Database

Selected publications

• Leadership and vision at AIBS: celebrating 30 years of contributions by Scott Glisson

  BioScience · 2026-03-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inclusive Sustainability Approaches in Common-Pool Resources from the Perspective of Blackologists

  UNC Libraries · 2025-06-11

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The tragedy of the commons posits that depletion of common resources harms all stakeholders. Although such a downward spiral is plausible, the potential outcomes are far more complex. In the present article, we report on this coupled feedback between resource strategies and the environment from the perspective of Blackologists. We fully embrace that our understanding and appreciation for nature are inherently shaped by our identity, culture, and lived experiences. First, we deconstruct the uses and beneficiaries of the shared resource. Then, we identify potential cascades of conflict through the lens of resource partitioning, plasticity, and mitigation strategies recognizing the inherent human dimension nested within these dynamics. We emphasize that who studies these processes can alter the framing and outcome of the tragedy through several case studies. We recommend that avoidance of environmental tragedies is possible with inclusive engagement, interdisciplinarity, and oversight at different spatial and temporal scales.

  PublisherDOI

• Carnivore activity across landuse gradients in a Mexican biosphere reserve

  Scientific Reports · 2025-02-05

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Anthropogenic activities are increasingly encroaching into wildland areas, heightening interactions between human and carnivore communities. Area-based conservation measures, such as protected areas (PAs), employ different management strategies via land-use designations to mitigate anthropogenic pressures and reduce human-wildlife conflicts in shared landscapes. Here, we assessed carnivore diel activity and temporal activity overlap in and around El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve (REBITRI) in Chiapas, Mexico, along a land-use designation gradient. We deployed 33 camera traps along the gradient, leveraging the reserve's core and buffer zones, and private lands surrounding the reserve. We calculated activity overlap between species to detect changes in interspecific competition and predator-prey interactions along the gradient. In total, we detected 14 carnivores in the core zones, 10 in the buffer zone, and 9 on private land across the 4777 trap-night survey. Significant shifts in single-species diel activity between the buffer zones and private land were detected for margay (Leopardus wiedii) and grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). Activity overlap was the highest in the buffer zone for all predator-prey pairs, and two competitor pairs, suggesting reduced diel niche partitioning in this land-use designation due to varied anthropogenic pressures. Our findings contribute to assessing PA efficacy and understanding carnivore activity in multiple-use landscapes where anthropogenic pressures are ubiquitous.

  PublisherDOI

• Neighborhood characteristics on environmental literacy in urban youth: a case from Detroit Metropolitan Area, USA

  Cities · 2025-05-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Urban youth are exposed to a myriad of conditions that may influence environmental literacy in their informal learning settings. In partnership with the Detroit Zoological Society's Education program, we implemented an environmental literacy questionnaire to 43 participants from ages 9–13. We investigated how place dependency, place identity, research competencies, empathy for wildlife, ecological knowledge – all components of environmental literacy using stepwise regression were influenced by social and environmental neighborhood characteristics in youth residing in the Detroit metropolitan area. While distance to park, road density, and impervious surface affected environmental literacy, social variables such as education attainment and housing burden were most important. Because environmental literacy is crucial to growing advocacy and promoting pro-environmental behavior understanding drivers that influence attitudes towards nature has ramifications for securing both an inclusive STEM workforce and sustainable future. • As cities expand, urban youth are at risk of disconnecting with nature. • Environmental literacy is key to ensuring sustainable cities. • Distance of park and pollutant exposure were important factors. • Empathy towards wildlife and research competencies were low for Detroit youth.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Individual variation within parasite communities of endangered African lions"

  2025-08-08

  peer-review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Network dynamics revealed from <scp>eDNA</scp> highlight seasonal variation in urban mammal communities

  Journal of Animal Ecology · 2025-06-17 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Urban ecosystems are expanding rapidly, significantly altering natural landscapes and impacting biodiversity. Here we explore seasonal variation in mammal diversity using environmental DNA (eDNA) from soil samples collected during winter and summer across 21 urban parks in Detroit, Michigan. We estimated gamma (regional), alpha (local) and beta (compositional change) diversity to determine if seasonal shifts, reflecting winter scarcity and summer abundance in mammal community composition and human activity, could be detected using eDNA. We expected that larger parks would exhibit greater diversity and higher seasonal turnover, consistent with the species-area relationship (SAR) and hypothesised that increased summer resource availability would lead to decreased network density as species disperse more broadly. We found that urban parks show subtle, park-specific changes in community composition influenced by both ecological and anthropogenic factors, with species including striped skunk, brown rat and groundhog responsible for the observed seasonal variation. Consistent with the SAR, larger parks supported higher species richness and diversity. Ecological network analysis, focusing on metrics such as clustering coefficient and network density, revealed a decrease in the overall connectivity and cohesiveness of species interactions from winter to summer, supporting our hypothesis of broader species dispersal during resource-rich periods. Notably, human DNA was prevalent in all parks, alongside detections of pig and cow eDNA, potentially reflecting human disturbance and anthropogenic food inputs. Our findings underscore the efficacy of eDNA analysis in capturing urban mammal community dynamics, the impact of human activities on biodiversity and its potential as a valuable tool for urban ecological research. Ultimately, enhancing monitoring capacity aids in conservation and urban planning efforts that will promote human-wildlife coexistence and preserve the socio-ecological benefits stemming from biodiversity across cityscapes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Individual variation within parasite communities of endangered African lions

  Royal Society Open Science · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Prey depletion and human–wildlife conflict threaten the critically endangered West African populations of lion ( Panthera leo leo ), which occupy less than 1.1% of their historic range in West Africa. These threats may alter behaviour through prey selection and affect exposure to parasites to compromise their health. We extracted DNA from faecal samples collected in four national parks in Benin, Burkina Faso and Senegal to characterize haemoparasites, nemabiome and microbiome. We used microsatellite markers to differentiate individuals and five primer sets to complete molecular analyses. From 20 individuals (12 males and 8 females), we found significant differences in the species richness and composition for all parasite groups across host populations and individual lions. We detected haemoparasites, including Babesia and Sarcocystis species, along with Blechomonas , a kinetoplastid, all of which raise potential health concerns. The nemabiome was dominated by Ancylostoma species (hookworms) with additional detections of lungworms from the genera Oslerus and Troglostrongylus . Significant interactions were found between population-level microbiome richness and both nemabiome and haemoparasite diversity. Our study provides the first effort to determine the parasite diversity among West African lion populations using non-invasive metabarcoding. Our findings highlight metabarcoding as a powerful tool to assess spatial variation in health and parasite diversity metrics for an endangered apex predator.

  PublisherDOI

• Measuring historical pollution: Natural history collections as tools for public health and environmental justice research

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-05-30 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Through the industrial era, pollutants have been unevenly distributed in the environment, disproportionately impacting disenfranchised communities. Redressing the unequal distribution of environmental pollution is thus a question of environmental justice and public health that requires policy solutions. However, data on pollutants for many locations and time periods are limited because environmental monitoring is largely reactive-i.e., pollutants are monitored only after they are recognized as harmful and are circulating in the environment at elevated levels. Without comprehensive historical pollution data, it is difficult to understand the full, intergenerational consequences of pollutants on environmental and human health. We assert that biological specimens in natural history collections are an underutilized source of quantitative pollution data for tracking environmental pollutants over two centuries to inform justice-centered policy solutions. Specifically, we: 1) discuss the need for quantitative pollution data in environmental research and its implications for public health and policy, 2) examine the capacity of biological specimens as tools for tracking environmental pollutants through space and time, 3) present a framework for integrating pollution datasets from specimens with spatially and temporally matched human health datasets to inform and evaluate policy, and 4) identify challenges and research directions associated with the use of quantitative pollution datasets. Biological specimens present a unique opportunity to fill critical gaps that address environmental challenges relevant to public health and policy. This work demands interdisciplinary partnerships and inclusive practices to connect data generated from specimens with urgent questions about environmental health and justice.

  PublisherDOI

• Forecasting habitat suitability across large carnivore ranges with climate and land use change

  Ecological Indicators · 2025-06-26 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  • Climate and land use changes both alter habitat suitability for large carnivores. • Land use had a limited influence on most models, but was important for some species. • Changes in habitat were more dramatic under pessimistic climate scenarios. • Threatened species tended to show more negative habitat suitability changes. Climate and land use change are major drivers of current and future species distributions. Large carnivores are particularly vulnerable to human impacts, and subsequent changes in their ranges can hamper ecosystem functioning and exacerbate conflict. Forecasting range changes of carnivores with future climate and land use change is important to inform conservation and management decisions. We used MaxEnt modeling to predict changes in habitat suitability of 21 large carnivore species from around the world with climate and land use change in 2050 under two climate scenarios (optimistic − SSP1-2.6 and pessimistic − SSP5-8.5). Predicted changes were highly variable, with some carnivores showing substantial decreases in habitat suitability and others substantial increases. Threatened species tended to show a more negative change in habitat suitability than non-threatened species. Changes in habitat suitability were generally more dramatic under SSP5-8.5 scenarios, where high fossil fuel usage is expected. The influence of land use on most carnivore models was limited compared to climate variables but was important for some species such as brown hyaena and sloth bear. Carnivores generally showed high presence in natural habitats e.g. natural tree cover and shrub/grassland and low presence in anthropogenic landscapes such as pasture/rangeland and cropland. Anthropogenic land use cover was high within carnivore ranges under current and future scenarios, and cropland was predicted to increase substantially by 2050 for several species, potentially causing range contractions. Our results can help guide future carnivore conservation and management efforts by highlighting target areas of vulnerabilities for land protection and adaptation strategies given shifting carnivore distributions.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Individual variation within parasite communities of endangered African lions"

  2025-09-13

  peer-review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Fear at the top – risks discernment and mitigation by an apex predator in a cityscape

  NSF · $605k · 2021–2025

• Wildlife Neighbors: Facilitated Ecological Research with Minority Youth via Camera Surveys in Urban Parks

  NSF · $300k · 2020–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Siria Gámez

  Yale University

  12 shared

• Wayne M. Getz

  University of California, Berkeley

  10 shared

• Anne Charmantier

  CECOLFES

  10 shared

• Carrie A. Cizauskas

  9 shared

• Kirby L. Mills

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  9 shared

• Colin J. Carlson

  Georgetown University

  9 shared

• Robert R. Dunn

  9 shared

• Rumaan Malhotra

  9 shared

Awards & honors

• MLK Jr.’s Legacy of Ecosystem Engineering