Technician
default image

Maria Mas Navarro

Maria Mas had her first contact with bats during her bachelor’s degree at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, specifically during her internship at the Museum of Granollers. There, she founded the basis of her future professional career and paths in the academia on 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.

Maria Mas had her first contact with bats during her bachelor’s degree at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, specifically during her internship at the Museum of Granollers. There, she founded the basis of her future professional career and paths in the academia on 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.

Maria completed his PhD at the Autonomus University of Barcelona in 2023, 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.

Currently, Maria is the main coordinator of the Atlas of Mammals of Catalonia since 2022. This project, founded by Observatori del Patrimoni Natural i la Biodiversitat de Catalunya (OPNB), is focused on the collection of wildlife data through the citizen science. The main objective of the Atlas is to obtain a current distribution of mammals during a specific period (minimum of three years) using a standardised protocol.

She is also collaborating 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. She is collaborating on the Bat Monitoring Program and 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.