Brian Wilsey is a professor at Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. He has studied grassland ecology for the past 25 years, on topics ranging from global change effects on plant-grazer interactions, relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, species diversity maintenance, carbon and nutrient cycling, and community assembly. He has visited and worked in grassland systems around the world, including the tall and midgrass prairies of the central U.S., savannah grasslands in Tanzania, steppe in China, and flooding Pampa of Argentina. He has published more than 80 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals on these and other topics.