Mas Navarro Maria

Maria Mas is currently a PhD student at the Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers, studying the relationship between bats in wetlands in a context of Climate Change. Her work is based on the Ebro Delta, one of the biggest deltas in West Europe, with strong emphasis on bioacoustics. She aims to evaluate the knowledge gap regarding bat-wetlands interaction and the importance of these threatened habitats during some specific relevant periods, such as the hibernation. Her first results were recently published in ‘Mammal Review’, and she received an award for the second best presentation during the BritBats symposium.

Her first contact with bats took place during her bachelor’s degree at Autonomus University of Barcelona, specifically during her internship at the Museum of Granollers. There, she founded the basis of her future professional career and paths in the academiaon bat ecology and biology. She decided to continue her scientific apprenticeship developing her Master thesis focused on vertical stratification of insectivorous bats in Central Amazon supervised by Dr Cristoph Meyer and Dr Adrià López-Baucells. During the following years, she focused all her attention and dedication to learn the intrincate secrets of bat’s life, developing her skills on bioacoustics and a broad variety of other field sampling techniques.

Since then, she has been collaborating and working on several projects at the Bat Research Group in the Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers, contributing to bat conservation and both national and international level. In parallel to her PhD, she is collaborating on the Bat Monitoring Program and collaborating as a graphic designer at the ‘Journal of Bat Research & Conservation’. Her main research interest is shaped by a deep interest on bat behaviour and conservation understood through the study of bat echolocation.