About

Lisa Kelly is a professor of ecology in the Department of Biology at UNC Pembroke, where she teaches core and elective courses in the Biology curriculum. Experiential learning is a key element of her courses, and her Conservation Biology students engage in service-learning activities in partnership with the Lumbee Tribe. 

She earned a Ph.D. in plant ecology (1996) from NC State University, earned a M.S. in plant taxonomy (1989) from Vanderbilt University, completed the Ant Course at the Manu Biosphere Reserve in Peru in 2013, and she completed a semester-long research sabbatical in genomics in the Corbin Jones Lab at UNC Chapel Hill in 2018.

She has studied invasive fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) in protected North Carolina wetlands since 2008, mentoring undergraduate researchers in studies involving ecological distributions, colony social form, and plant food diets. Her students have presented their work at international, national, regional, state, and local conferences. She and collaborators are using molecular techniques to test hypotheses about mutualistic interactions between fire ants and honeydew insects (hemipterans) in high-quality longleaf pine savannas. Mutualisms between these insects are common, and energy-rich honeydew could play a key role in invasion success. Next-generation and Sanger sequence data have detected novel plant foods in fire ant diets, possibly stemming from mutualism. Kelly and her colleague Kaitlin Campbell have an ongoing study of insect diversity and the effects of invasive ants on the native ant fauna of protected savannas.  

As director of the UNCP Herbarium (PEMB), Kelly has mentored students in floristic studies and herbarium curation. As web manager of the Biology website, she enjoys highlighting the accomplishments of faculty, staff, and students.