Dr. Maria del mar leza salord (mar)

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, LABORATORY OF ZOOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF THE BALEARIC ISLANDS
​MALLORCA, SPAIN

Mar received a PhD in Biology (awarded with the European Mention) from the University of the Balearic Islands in 2015, where her thesis focused on studying honeybee health. She is fascinated by the diversity of wild bees, and after her PhD she started work on wild bee populations in agro/forest-ecosystems, studying pollination services and ways to better support pollinator populations. Since 2015, she has led research in the the Balearic Islands on the yellow-legged hornet, an invasive species that preys upon honeybees and other pollinators. She is using citizen science to study the hornet's distribution and to raise public awareness.

Mar travelled from Mallorca to Riverside to work in the Woodard lab in Spring 2017 to begin a collaborative project on understanding the factors involved in pollinator population decline. During her time in the lab, she is leading an experiment on the combinatorial effects of neonicotinoid insecticides and diet on bumblebees. In the future, the entire Woodard lab plans to go visit this bee enthusiast in the Balearic Islands, to study the bee fauna (and beaches) of this island system, which is climatically similar to Southern California.

Learn more about Mar and her work by visiting her university website and her ResearchGate page. To read about her work on invasive hornets, visit the website for her citizen science app.