Diego Ellis Soto

• P.hD. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
• PostDoc Position at Berkeley

Energy, nutrients and organisms move over landscapes, connecting ecosystems across space and time. Meta‐ecosystem theory investigates the emerging properties of local ecosystems coupled spatially by these movements of organisms and matter, by explicitly tracking exchanges of multiple substances across ecosystem borders. To date, meta‐ecosystem rese...

As climate change transforms the biosphere, more comprehensive andbiologically relevant measurements of changing conditions are needed.Traditional climate measurements are often constrained by geographicallystatic, coarse, sparse and biased sampling, and only indirect links to ecologicalresponses. Here we discuss how animal-borne sensors can delive...

As human activities increasingly shape land- and seascapes, understanding human-wildlife interactions is imperative for preserving biodiversity. Habitats are impacted not only by static modifications, such as roads, buildings and other infrastructure, but also by the dynamic movement of people and their vehicles occurring over shorter time scales....

The niche is a key concept that unifies ecology and evolutionary biology. However, empirical and theoretical treatments of the niche are mostly performed at the species level, neglecting individuals as important units of ecological and evolutionary processes. So far, a formal mathematical link between individual-level niches and higher organismal-l...

Over the past five decades, a large number of wild animals have been individually identified by various observation systems and/or temporary tracking methods, providing unparalleled insights into their lives over both time and space. However, so far there is no comprehensive record of uniquely individually identified animals nor where their data an...

Urbanization alters species ranges and nature’s contributions to people, motivating urban conservation. Residential segregation policies have left an indelible impact on urban environments, greenspaces, and wildlife communities, creating socioeconomic heterogeneity and altering biota. However, the extent to which data sufficiently capture urban bio...

Brief introduction: What are microclimates and why are they important? Microclimate science has developed into a global discipline. Microclimate science is increasingly used to understand and mitigate climate and biodiversity shifts. Here, we provide an overview of the current status of microclimate ecology and biogeography in terrestrial ecosystem...

There is a cross‐sectoral push among conservationists to simultaneously mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change, especially as the latter increasingly threatens the former. Growing evidence demonstrates that animals can have substantial impacts on carbon cycling. As such, there are increasing calls to use animal conservation and rewilding to...

Migratory, long‐lived animals are an important focus for life‐history theory because they manifest extreme trade‐offs in life‐history traits: delayed maturity, low fecundity, variable recruitment rates, long generation times, and vital rates that respond to variation across environments. Galapagos tortoises are an iconic example: they are long‐live...

Data that influence policy and major investment decisions risk entrenching social and political inequities

The study of animal and human movement has experienced a remarkable boom over the last decades, mainly due to the continuous development of location-aware sensors (e.g. bio-logging devices for animals; GPS trackers for humans) capable of capturing individual locations at a constantly increasing spatio-temporal resolution [7, 2]. Anthropogenic press...

Historic segregation and inequality are critical to understanding modern environmental conditions. Race-based zoning policies, such as redlining in the United States during the 1930s, are associated with racial inequity and adverse multigenerational socioeconomic levels in income and education, and disparate environmental characteristics including...

COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020 reduced human mobility, providing an opportunity to disentangle its effects on animals from those of landscape modifications. Using GPS data, we compared movements and road avoidance of 2300 terrestrial mammals (43 species) during the lockdowns to the same period in 2019. Individual responses were variable with no c...

There is a cross-sectoral push amongst conservation practitioners to simultaneously mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change, especially as the latter increasingly threatens the former. Growing evidence demonstrates that animals can have substantial impacts on carbon cycling and as such, there are increasing calls to use animal conservation an...

Animal migration is a key process underlying active subsidies and species dispersal over long distances, which affects the connectivity and functioning of ecosystems. Despite much research describing patterns of where animals migrate, we still lack a framework for quantifying and predicting how animal migration affects ecosystem processes. In this...

Ecological restoration is critical for climate and biodiversity resilience over the coming century. Today, there is strong evidence that wildlife can significantly influence the distribution and stoichiometry of elements across landscapes, with subsequent impacts on the composition and functioning of ecosystems. Consequently, any anthropogenic acti...

The now-published, peer reviewed version containing additional analyses, can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01688-5 The paper was retitled "Bird biodiversity sampling shows increasing geographical disparities associated with historical redlining in the United States" Citizen science data has rapidly gained influence in u...

Space-based tracking technology using low-cost miniature tags is now delivering data on fine-scale animal movement at near-global scale. Linked with remotely sensed environmental data, this offers a biological lens on habitat integrity and connectivity for conservation and human health; a global network of animal sentinels of environmental change.

Animal migration is a key process underlying active subsidies and species dispersal over long distances, which affects the connectivity and functioning of ecosystems. Despite much research describing patterns of where animals migrate, we still lack a framework for quantifying and predicting how animal migration affects ecosystem processes. In this...

Anthropogenic change is affecting mountain regions worldwide. Managing this change and advancing biodiversity information for research requires spatially detailed information on species distributions which often is incomplete. Here, we provide a model‐based approach for the integration of expert‐based elevational range information with expert range...

Ectothermic Galapagos tortoises must optimize their diet and behavioral repertoire in response to variable conditions across the Archipelago. In this chapter, data on tortoise diets, foraging behavior, social organization, and activity patterns from multiple species are summarized in the context of selection pressure on individuals that determine t...

Despite the popular view of tortoises as slow, sedentary plodders, movement is a critical aspect of the life of Galapagos tortoises. Galapagos tortoises move to find and exploit food resources, thermoregulate, find mates, locate nighttime resting sites, and much more in their heterogeneous habitats. More than a decade of global positioning system d...

Ecosystems are open systems connected through spatial flows of energy, matter, and nutrients. Predicting and managing ecosystem interdependence requires a rigorous quantitative understanding of the drivers and vectors that connect ecosystems across spatio-temporal scales. Animals act as such vectors when they transport nutrients across landscapes i...

Migratory decisions in birds are closely tied to environmental cues and fat stores, but it remains unknown if the same variables trigger bat migration. To learn more about the rare phenomenon of bat migration, we studied departure decisions of female common noctules (Nyctalus noctula) in southern Germany. We did not find the fattening period that m...

The independent evolution of the two toothed jaws of cichlid fishes is thought to have promoted their unparalleled ecological divergence and species richness. However, dental divergence in cichlids could exhibit substantial genetic covariance and this could dictate how traits like tooth numbers evolve in different African Lakes and on their two jaw...

Native biodiversity on the Galapagos Archipelago is severely threatened by invasive alien species. On Santa Cruz Island, the abundance of introduced plant species is low in the arid lowlands of the Galapagos National Park, but increases with elevation into unprotected humid highlands. Two common alien plant species, guava (Psidium guajava) and pass...