Biology subjects

Ellis Soto, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Ellis Soto, D..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Extreme Heat as the New Normal: A Methodological Roadmap for Behavior, Physiology, and Species Distributions

A defining feature of climate change is the increasing frequency, intensity, and severity of extreme weather events. Among them, extreme heat is recognized as a critical driver of ecological and evolutionary change. Intense heat episodes can exceed physiological limits, alter animal movement, restructure geographic ranges, and increase extinction risk more than gradual changes to mean temperatures. Yet links between extreme heat events and organismal biology remain limited, in part because definitions and metrics are not standardized, and user-friendly workflows and guides are lacking for many biologists. We present a methodological roadmap, with reproducible code, for integrating extreme heat into studies of behavior, physiology, biophysical ecology, species distribution models (SDMs), and population dynamics. First, we provide standardized computational approaches to define and quantify extreme heat. Second, we fit species distribution models for California quail (Callipepla californica) that include an extreme heat metric and showcase improved predictions of habitat suitability, particularly at range edges. Third, we compute biophysical simulations to quantify exposure to thermal stress in Sleepy lizards (Tiliqua rugosa) across distinct macro- and microclimates. Finally, accounting for temporal autocorrelation in temperature profiles in population simulation models, we show that clustered heat extremes--missed by averages--can increase the risk of population collapse. As extreme heat events become more common, incorporating their dynamics is essential for understanding ecological and evolutionary change, designing experiments across species geographic ranges, and supporting conservation in a rapidly warming world. Together, these case studies illustrate a reproducible, organism-informed roadmap to integrate extreme heat into predictions of ecological impacts and inference across levels of biological organization under ongoing climate change.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Global monitoring of wildlife mortality through participatory science in near-real time

Detection of wildlife mortality events is critical for timely conservation and natural resource management. We present an open-source, web-based decision support tool that queries, aggregates and summarizes participatory science data from iNaturalist to monitor mortality events worldwide. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using four case studies spanning taxonomic, spatial, and temporal scales. In Canada and the United States, high peaks of bird mortality coincided with zoonotic risk during avian influenza outbreaks. Across Latin America, we detected 75 mortality events of critically endangered species. In California, recorded mammal mortality was associated with human infrastructure, including proximity to roads, and to a lesser extent, the human footprint. Mortality of pumas (Puma concolor) was detected across nine countries, highlighting the need for international cooperation to conserve mobile species. Our tool enables resource managers to flag emerging threats and empowers participatory scientists to monitor and integrate mortality records for conservation.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Scaling ecological niches from individuals to populations and beyond

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-level niches has been lacking, hampering the unification of ecological theories and more accurate forecasts of biodiversity change. To fill in this gap, we propose a bottom-up approach to derive population and higher organismal-level niches from individual niches. We demonstrate the power of our framework by showing that 1) the statistical properties of higher organismal-level niches (e.g. niche breadth, skewness etc.) can be partitioned into individual contributions; 2) the species-level niche shifts can be estimated by tracing the responses of individuals. Our method paves the way for a unifying niche theory and enables mechanistic assessments of organism-environment relationships across organismal scales.

ecology↗