Phone
Office Location
411 Boyden Hall
I’m interested in population level processes and combine phylogeography, species distribution modeling, and fossils to solve evolutionary & demographic questions. Primarily, I study recent mammal extinctions in the Caribbean. I use genetic, fossil, and distribution model data to study how recent climate change (i.e. from Pleistocene to Holocene) and anthropogenic habitat change affected populations of island bats. The combined use of these data is powerful and help us evaluate hypotheses about the evolutionary processes that shaped island bats and how they reacted to climate change and habitat change from past to present. By using this framework, we hope to improve our understanding of what happens to these bats today and better predict what may happen to them in the future. This program is question-driven and I have also applied these tools to other systems (e.g. rodents, cervids, and amphibians) in island and mainland environments. Other areas of research in my lab include questions on demography, population connectivity, community composition, and natural history of mammals of New Jersey. Check out my lab website for more details.
Education
PhD, Biology: University of Florida, Gainesville
MS, Ecology: Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti
BS, Biology: Interamerican University of Puerto Rico
Publications
Soto-Centeno, J.A., N.B. Simmons, & D.W. Steadman. (2017) The bat community of Haiti and evidence for its long-term persistence at high elevations. PLOS ONE. 12 e0178066.
Barrow, L.N., J.A. Soto-Centeno, A.R. Warwick, A.R. Lemmon, and E.M. Lemmon. (2017) Evaluating suture zones and refugia through comparative phylogeography of amphibians in the Southern Coastal Plain. J. Biogeog. DOI: 10.1111/jbi.13069
Velazco P.M., J.A. Soto-Centeno, D.W. Fleck, R.S. Voss, & N.B Simmons. (2017) A New Species of Nectar-feeding Bat of the Genus Hsunycteris (Phyllostomidae: Lonchophyllinae) from Northeastern Peru. Am. Mus. Novitates 3881:1–26.
Pinto C.M., J.A. Soto-Centeno, A.M. Núñez Quiroz, N. Ferreyra, F. Delgado-Espinoza, P.W. Stahl, & D.G. Tirira. (2016) Archaeology, biogeography and mammalogy do not provide evidence for tarukas (Cervidae: Hippocamelus antisensis) in Ecuador. J. Mamm. 97:41–53.
Soto-Centeno, J.A., M. O’Brien, & N.B. Simmons. (2015) The importance of late Quaternary climate change and karst on distributions of Caribbean mormoopid bats. Am. Mus. Novit. 3847:1–32.
Steadman, D.W., N.A. Albury, B. Kakuk, J.I. Mead, J.A. Soto-Centeno, H.M. Singleton, & J. Franklin. (2015) The vertebrate community on an ice-age Caribbean island. PNAS. 112:E5963–5971.
Soto-Centeno, J.A. & D.W. Steadman. (2015) Fossils reject climate change as the cause of extinction of Caribbean bats. Sci. Rept. 5:7971.
Soto-Centeno, J.A., D.L. Phillips, A. Kurta, & K.A. Hobson. (2014) Food resource partitioning in nectar feeding bats on Puerto Rico. J. Trop. Ecol. 30:359–369.
Soto-Centeno, J.A., L.N. Barrow, J.M. Allen, & D.L. Reed. (2013) Re-evaluation of a classic phylogeographic barrier: New techniques reveal the influence of microgeographic climate variation on population divergence. Ecol. Evol. 3:1603–1613.