Lobophora variegata (= Pocockiella varieagata) often presents a beautiful blue iridescence due to microscopic bacteria which live on the surface of the blades [citation needed].

Dictyotales are an order of brown algae (Phaeophyceae), a lineage of multicellular photosynthetic protists composed by a thallus that has a certain level of tissue differentiation.

Their ecological success is often linked to their ability to deter grazers in habitats subject to strong grazing pressure, making them an important competitor of corals and other sessile benthic life in many coastal ecosystems.

[6] Some species, in particular within the genus Dictyota, produce terpenoids (such as pachydictyol) that inhibit grazing by herbivorous amphipods, sea urchins and fish.

[5] The species Lobophora variegata produces a cyclic lactone, lobophorolide, that in low concentrations is an active compound against pathogenic and saprophytic marine fungi.

[7] The successful spread of this alga is due in part to its ability to asexually reproduce from fragments created by "biotic and abiotic disturbances".

Its margins contain a layer of apical cells with hairs that create a microenvironment where aragonite nucleation occurs, if isolated from the water flow.

[5] The order Dictyotales contains only one family, Dictyotaceae, described by French biologist Jean Vincent Félix Lamouroux, and later validly published by Belgian botanist Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier in 1822.