Carlos Botero

About

Carlos Botero is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Integrative Biology. His research focuses on how organisms adapt to fluctuating environments, with particular interest in the evolutionary causes and consequences of enhanced cognition, the forces driving human cultural evolution, and predicting organismal responses to climate change. Botero earned his doctorate from Cornell University and has previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Data science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Ecology
• Sociology
• Management science
• Linguistics
• History

Selected publications

• Complementarity in Allen’s and Bergmann’s rules among birds

  Nature Communications · 2023-07-15 · 27 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Biologists have long noted that endotherms tend to have larger bodies (Bergmann's rule) and shorter appendages (Allen's rule) in colder environments. Nevertheless, many taxonomic groups appear not to conform to these 'rules', and general explanations for these frequent exceptions are currently lacking. Here we note that by combining complementary changes in body and extremity size, lineages could theoretically respond to thermal gradients with smaller changes in either trait than those predicted…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A recent northern origin for the Uto-Aztecan family

  Language · 2023 · 18 citations

  The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest language families in the Americas. However, there has been considerable debate about its origin and how it spread. Here we use Bayesian phylogenetic methods to analyze lexical data from thirty-four Uto-Aztecan varieties and two Kiowa-Tanoan languages. We infer the age of Proto-Uto-Aztecan to be around 4,100 years (3,258–5,025 years) and identify the most likely homeland to be near what is now Southern California. We reconstruct the most proba…

  DOI

• Variable ambient temperature promotes song learning and production in zebra finches

  Behavioral Ecology · 2023-03-19 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Current climate change is leading to increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions and is imposing new challenges to wildlife. For example, ambient conditions fluctuating during critical developmental periods could potentially impair the development of cognitive systems and may therefore have a long-term influence on an individual’s life. We studied the impact of temperature variability on zebra finch cognition, focusing on song learning and song quality (N = 76 males). We used a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fluctuating selection facilitates the discovery of broadly effective but difficult to reach adaptive outcomes in yeast

  Evolution Letters · 2023-11-02 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Evolutionary compromises are thought to be common under fluctuating selection because the mutations that best enable adaptation to one environmental context can often be detrimental to others. Yet, prior experimental work has shown that generalists can sometimes perform as well as specialists in their own environments. Here we use a highly replicated evolutionary experiment (N = 448 asexual lineages of the brewer’s yeast) to show that even though fluctuation between two environmental co…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The global determinants of climate niche breadth in birds

  Nature Communications · 2025-04-17 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Understanding why certain species occupy wider climate niches than others is a fundamental pursuit in ecology with important implications for conservation and management. However, existing synthesis on this topic has focused on the consequences rather than the causes of climate niche expansion, leading to significant gaps in our understanding of the possible evolutionary drivers of this important ecological property. Here we leverage species distribution models powered by millions of citizen sci…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• EAGER: Removing barriers to macro-ecoevolutionary studies of the avian brain

  NSF · $150k · 2018–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Russell D. Gray

  University of Auckland

  148 shared

• Simon J. Greenhill

  University of Auckland

  131 shared

• Hannah J. Haynie

  Kent State University

  123 shared

• Angela M. Chira

  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

  112 shared

• Johann‐Mattis List

  109 shared

• Lyle Campbell

  108 shared

• Robert M. Ross

  Macquarie University

  72 shared

• Michael C. Gavin

  Colorado State University

  42 shared

Education

• Ph. D., Neurobiology and Behavior

  Cornell University

  2007

Similar researchers at University of Texas at Austin

• Eric V Anslynh-92
• Luis A Caffarellih-92
• Boris Breizmanh-74