Cristina de Gracia Marin completed her Master of Science (MSc) at the Menéndez Pelayo International University, coordinated by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in 2021. During her MSc thesis she analyzed butterfly community responses to changes over space and time to vegetation encroachment and climate change in central Spain. To do so, she used the data from the National Atlas of Spain with occurrence records from 1975 to 2016 from two mountainous systems of the Iberian Peninsula. This topic sparked her interest in butterflies and gave her experience on data analysis with R, and Geographic Information System (GIS).
She is currently working as a technician at the Natural Science Museum of Granollers ( MCNG ) and the Blanes Centre for Advanced Studies (CEAB) in a project called VANESSA. The aim of this project is to study the effect of extensive livestock farming on the butterfly populations in alpine ecosystems and the application of citizen science projects for this type of studies. She is using the data from CBMS (Catalan Butterfly Monitoring Scheme), which is an extensive citizen science program coordinated by the (MCNG). Her main interests include the anthropic effect on biodiversity and ecology and behaviour of animal populations, more in concrete butterflies.
