Associate Professor Guido Parra Vergara

I am a behavioural and population ecologist interested in how individual behaviour, species interactions, and spatial dynamics scale to shape population processes and community structure, and how this understanding can be used to address pressing conservation challenges. My research spans tropical and temperate coastal systems and integrates long-term field studies, spatial and ecological modelling, and emerging technologies to link individual behaviour and species interactions with population dynamics and the organisation of marine communities.

I use marine mammals as model systems because, as large-brained, long-lived, and highly social species, they provide powerful natural experiments for understanding how behaviour, sociality, and resource use evolve and operate under ecological constraints. At the same time, they serve as sensitive indicators of ecosystem condition across broad seascapes and long timescales. Understanding how these species cope, or fail to cope, with rapid environmental change therefore informs both effective conservation and broader insight into the persistence of intelligent, social species in an increasingly human-dominated world.

I am currently Associate Professor at Flinders University, where I lead the Cetacean Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution Lab (CEBEL), a multidisciplinary research group that integrates long-term field programs, quantitative modelling, and emerging technologies to investigate how marine mammals live, adapt, and persist in rapidly changing oceans.