The UC Santa Cruz community is deeply saddened to share the sudden and unexpected passing of Carlos Garita-Alvarado on March 9 at his home in Santa Cruz at the age of 38. Born in San Rafael de Oreamuno, Cartago, Costa Rica, Garita-Alvarado was a postdoctoral researcher in the labs of Joanna Kelley and Eric Palkovacs, professors in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Garita-Alvarado joined the department in January 2025 and brought to the labs his love of fish biology. He was interested in fish evolution and aquatic ecology, especially the selective pressures underlying morphological and behavioral diversification in freshwater fish.
Garita-Alvarado came to UC Santa Cruz after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Queretaro, where he studied the effect of cyanotoxins on fish communities. He received his Ph.D. in 2021 from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, studying adaptive divergence in Central American and Mexican fishes with Professor Patricia Ornelas García, and in collaboration with the National Museum of Natural Sciences-CSIC in Spain.
Prior to moving to Mexico, he received a bachelor’s degree in biology (2010) and master’s in biology (2016) from University of Costa Rica in San José, where he worked on fish-mating behavior. During this time, he was an assistant at the Museum of Zoology—collaborating with the fish and mollusk collections—and where he was largely involved in surveying bodies of freshwater in Costa Rica in collaboration with William Bushing.
Garita-Alvarado was passionate about fish and a great expert on the Neotropical fish fauna. He thoroughly enjoyed teaching and liked sharing and discussing his ideas. His love of fish extended beyond the academic realm. He showed enormous enthusiasm and ability for catching fish and delighted in finding the perfect recipe for each of them. He wove and sold fishing nets in his free time.
Those who knew Garita-Alvarado described him as a promising young scientist with an open and inquisitive mind and a caring heart, saying that they greatly regret that the time with him was so short.
Garita-Alvarado is survived by his mother, Dora María Alvarado Acuña, his father, Carlos Alberto Garita Rojas, his two sisters, Roxana and Carmen, and his brother Leonardo.
