Dr. Colleen Bove received her B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and her Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Bove worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Boston University where she conducted marine invertebrate research and taught several courses. She joined the Biology Department at Ursinus College in 2023.

Dr. Bove’s lab explores the causes and consequences of environmental stress in aquatic ecosystems. Our expertise encompasses multiple levels of biological organization including molecular and physiological lab assessments, aquarium-based experiments, and field expeditions. By pairing experimental approaches with computer-based geospatial techniques, we can better understand organismal responses within historical and projected rates of environmental changes.

Current research projects in the lab include coral microbial community composition across the Caribbean, physiology of marine invertebrates (American slipper snail, Eastern Oysters) under climate change, and microplastic pollution in the Schuylkill River. Along with global change and marine ecology research, I am very passionate about open and reproducible science through public posting of R code, data, and protocols on GitHub and Zenodo.