Nick M. Haddad

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Nick M. Haddad is an ecologist and conservation biologist at Michigan State University. He is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and co-director of the Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research site. He has also worked to connect science with conservation decisions through online resources like Conservation Corridor.

Education and early work
Haddad earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from Stanford University in 1991, where he studied birds. He earned his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Georgia in 1997, working with Ron Pulliam. He did a postdoc with David Tilman at the University of Minnesota from 1997 to 1999, studying how plant diversity affects insects.

Career and research focus
He joined North Carolina State University in 1999 as the William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor in Applied Ecology and led the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. Since 2017 he has been a professor at Michigan State University and co-director of the Kellogg Biological Station LTER site, which studies how ecological processes and sustainable farming practices can help balance crop yields with the environment.

A landmark corridor study
In 1994 Haddad began a large, long-term experiment with the U.S. Forest Service at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to test whether landscape corridors help species move and survive. The work showed that corridors boost dispersal of butterflies and other insects, plants, and small mammals, and they increase plant diversity compared with isolated fragments. The project is still ongoing and is regarded as a landmark demonstration of corridor benefits at a big spatial and long time scale.

Broader implications of fragmentation
Haddad has collaborated with other researchers to show that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity and can create an “extinction debt,” meaning species may go extinct long after the habitat has become fragmented. His work also highlights how forest edges can extend into habitat interior and harm biodiversity.

Public outreach and conservation stories
In 2013 he created the Conservation Corridor web portal to share information about corridors and connectivity. His 2019 book, The Last Butterflies, follows six rare butterfly species and the threats they face, stressing that conservation work often begins too late. The book has been praised for explaining how landscape changes affect insect survival and what science can do to help.

Conservation and species restoration
Haddad’s lab has collaborated with zoos to maintain captive populations of rare species like the Poweshiek skipperling and Mitchell’s satyr to support restoration efforts. He has also studied broader insect declines, noting long-term drops in butterfly abundance in Ohio and across the continental United States since 2000.

Awards and recognition
Haddad was named a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in 2017 for his pioneering experimental work on habitat fragmentation and corridors. He has been a Leadership Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation since 2008, and in 2025 he was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.