Diego Ellis Soto

Position: 
Graduate Student
Area of Interest: 
Movement Ecology, Global Change Biology, Conservation, Remote Sensing, Spatial Ecology
Bio: 

Diego is a PhD student in the Jetz lab interested in the causes and consequences of animal movement. Particularly he aims to study how rapid environmental and anthropogenic change affects animal space and habitat use. With a focus on the movement and distributions of individuals, populations and species using emergent technologies such as GPS tracking, remote sensing, and citizen science he is interested in ecological forecasting at fine spatio-temporal scales. Diego obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Germany, at the University of Trier and University of Konstanz. Prior to joining the Jetz lab, Diego was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology doing a variety of fieldwork and working for Movebank, the largest database for animal movement data. Most of his fieldwork experience has been on giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands and on birds and bats in southern Germany. Diego is passioned about emergent open-source technologies, scientific communication and bringing the humanities and the sciences closer together. When he is not coding or writing on his computer, you can find him birdwatching at East Rock Park, making music or walking his dog.

Lab Specialty Group: 
Animal Movement
Selected Publications: 

1. Ellis-Soto D, Merow C, Amatulli G, Jetz W, 2021. Continental-scale 1km hummingbird diversity derived from fusing point records with lateral and elevational expert information. Ecography, https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05119

2. Ellis-Soto D, Ferraro K, Rizzuto M, Briggs E, Monk J, Schmitz OJ, 2021. A methodological roadmap to quantify animal-vectorized subsidies. Journal of Animal Ecology In press. Preprint https://ecoevorxiv.org/zyx84/

3. Blake S, Tapia PI, Safi K, Ellis-Soto D, 2021. Diet, Behavior and Activity patterns. Galapagos Giant Tortoises Academic Press https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817554-5.00025-3

4. Ellis-Soto D, Blake S, Soultan A, Guézou A, F Cabrera, Lötters S, 2017. Plant species dispersed by giant tortoises surf the wave of habitat suitability under anthropogenic climate change. PloS One https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181333

5. Dechmann DKN, Wikelski M, Ellis-Soto D, Safi K, O’Mara T. Determinants of spring migration departure decision in a bat. Biology letters. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0395

Major Taxa: 
Giant tortoises (Chelonoidis)
Major Study Region: 
The Americas
Where You're From: 
Uruguay/Italy
Hobbies: 
Making music, Hiking, walking my dog