Sue Lowerre-Barbieri

Research Associate Professor, Fisheries Ecology

Sue Lowerre-Barbieri splits her time between being a research associate professor at UF and being a research scientist at FWRI. She is interested in developing academic and government collaborations which lead to integrative science and management strategy evaluations.

Sue is the Chair of the iTAG (integrative tracking of aquatic animals in the Gulf of Mexico) steering committee, the southern representative for the American Fisheries Society, and a member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s special Red Drum Science and Statistics Committee.

She started her career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, west Africa and on her return worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Pascacoula, Mississippi. After receiving her PhD she held a post-doctoral position at the University of Georgia Marine laboratory on Sapelo Island. She has worked for FWRI since 1999 and joined the UF faculty in 2015.

• Research Interests

  Sue's research focuses on understanding drivers of reproductive success in marine fishes and includes studies on population structure, spatio-temporal reproductive behavior, dispersal, sex change in sequential hermaphrodites, and the effect of habitat context on spatial ecology.

  On-going projects include:

  1. Assessing if low male abundance limits stock productivity in gag grouper
  2. How proximity to natural and artificial reefs affects red snapper site fidelity in the eastern Gulf of Mexico
  3. Evaluating migratory pathways of marine fishes in the Florida Keys
  4. Using aerial surveys, acoustic telemetry, capture-based sampling and genetics to assess the Red Drum spawning population off central Florida and histological gonadal assessment to assess where and when key marine species spawn.

• Education

  • PhD, Population Dynamics, College of William and Mary/Virginia Institute of Marine Science, 1994
  • BA, Biology and English, University of Virginia, 1984