Ligia Collado-Vides, Ph.D.

SERC Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Collado-Vides is a marine botanist with a research emphasis in ecology of tropical macroalgae, commonly known as seaweeds. Along her career, she has explored the tropical flora of seagrass and reef communities in the Mexican Caribbean. She has experience in the taxonomy of species, as well as some of their ecological aspects, particularly the form-function relationship in green macroalgae. Her research includes the study of the impact of clonal growth on ecological and evolutionary aspects of macroalgae, and the role of clonality in the success of invasive macroalgal species. Using field data and theoretical tools she developed spatial models of macroalgae using L-Systems to simulate their clonal growth and colonization strategies. Dr. Collado-Vides’s present research is focus in understanding the shift of coral, and seagrass dominated communities into macroalgae dominated communities as a result of changes at global and local scales. She is analyzing the distribution and long-term dynamics of algal communities in the Florida Keys. Topics such as the changes in demographic patterns of increasing species as well as their interaction with the environment are under study. Finally she is interested in the link between the research results and its applications in marine conservation, particularly in Marine Protected Areas in the Caribbean.