I am an evolutionary and quantitative ecologist with a broad interest in understanding the origin, causes, and consequences of biodiversity. I am particularly interested in unraveling complex patterns of biodiversity and evaluating how macroevolutionary processes—i.e., speciation, extinction, and dispersal—as well as current and future environmental conditions, determine the patterns we observe in nature and species co-occurrence within ecological communities. The ultimate goal of my research program is to apply the insights gained from understanding the biodiversity patterns to aid existing conservation efforts and management responses to ongoing global change and biodiversity loss.

Some of the questions tackled in my research program are:
   
   Macroecology and Macroevolution
   1. Why do the patterns we observe in nature exist?
   2. Why are more species found in some places of the world than others?
   3. How do traits evolve (tempo and mode), and how are they linked to the clades' diversification?
   
   Community Assembly
   1. What drives the assembly of species into local communities?
   2. How do biogeographic/climatic origins influence both patterns of species diversity and species composition?
   3. Do plant species' responses to environmental change have an evolutionary basis that is predictable from phylogeny?
   4. Does phylogenetic conservatism of environmental niches or functional traits influence species responses to environmental change?

Pinto-Ledezma, J.N., S. Díaz, B.S. Halpern, C. Khoury and J. Cavender-Bares. (2024). No branch left behind: tracking terrestrial biodiversity from a phylogenetic completeness perspective. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 22(2): e2696.
 

Bala, A., J.N. Pinto-Ledezma and Z.A. Reshi. (2024). Phylogenetic relatedness of plant species co-occurring with an invasive alien plant species (Anthemis cotula L.) varies with elevation. Ecosphere.

Guzmán, J.A., J.N. Pinto-Ledezma, D. Frantz, P.A Townsend, J. Juzwik and J. Cavender- Bares. (2023). Mapping oak wilt disease from space using land surface phenology. Remote Sensing of Environment, 298: 113794.

Moulatlet, G.M., B. Kusumoto, J.N. Pinto-Ledezma, T. Shiono, Y. Kubota and F. Villalo- bos. (2023). Global patterns of phylogenetic beta-diversity components in angiosperms. Journal of Vegetation Science, 34(4): e13203. (JVS Editors’ Award for 2023).

Pellegrini, A.F., L. Anderegg, J.N. Pinto-Ledezma, J. Cavender-Bares, S.E. Hobbie and P.B. Reich. (2023). Consistent physiological, ecological, and evolutionary effects of fire regime on conservative leaf economics strategies plant communities. Ecology Letters, 26(4): 597–608.

Meltesen, K.M., E.T. Whiting, J.N. Pinto-Ledezma, T.S. Cicak and D.L. Fox. (2023). Deconstructing the latitudinal diversity gradient of North American mammals by nominal order. Journal of Mammalogy, 104(4): 707-722. (Editor’s Choice).

Velasco, J.A. and J.N. Pinto-Ledezma. (2022). Mapping diversification metrics in macroecological studies: prospects and challenges. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 10: 951271.

Arango, A., J.N. Pinto-Ledezma, O. Soto-Rojas, A.M. Lindsay, Ch.D. Mendenhall and F. Villalobos. (2022). Hand-Wing Index as a surrogate for dispersal: the case of the Emberizoidea radiation. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 137(1): 137–144.

 Fontes, C., J.N. Pinto-Ledezma, A.L. Jacobsen, R.B. Pratt and J. Cavender-Bares. (2022). Adaptive variation among oaks in wood anatomical properties is shaped by climate of origin and shows limited plasticity across environments. Functional Ecology, 36(2): 326-340.

Pinto-Ledezma, J.N. and J. Cavender-Bares. (2021). Predicting species distributions and community composition using satellite remote sensing predictors. Scientific Reports, 11: 16448.

Pinto-Ledezma, J.N., F. Villalobos, P. Reich, J. Catford, D. Larkin and J. Cavender-Bares. (2020). Testing Darwin’s naturalization conundrum based on taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional dimensions of vascular plant diversity. Ecological Monographs, 90(4): e01420.
 

Cavender-Bares, J., C. Fontes and J.N. Pinto-Ledezma. (2020). Open questions in understanding the adaptive significance of plant functional trait variation within a single lineage. New Phytologist, 227(3): 659-663.

• Ph.D. Federal University of Goiás (Brazil). 2017
• The University of Minnesota President's Postdoctoral Fellow. 2022 – 2024