Special Highlight:
Marina Marquis
Recipient of the Coral Gables Garden Club Scholarships
By Marina Marquis
Coral Gables Garden Club Scholarship recipient Marina Marquis
In December 2025, I presented my pollinator research at the 2025 British Ecological Society (BES) Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. I am a master's student at the University of Florida, where I study how human-driven environmental change affects insect pollinators.
My research is supported by the Coral Gables Garden Club Scholarship, which helps students pursuing higher education in the natural sciences I first learned about this opportunity through word of mouth and have been fortunate to receive the award more than once. The scholarship supports my ongoing field research and made it possible for me to attend the BES Conference to present my work.
As part of my broader research on pollinators and environmental change, I investigated whether urbanization is altering insect pollinator seasonality. In other words, I asked whether urban pollinators are active at different times of the year. Using a large citizen science dataset, | assessed the seasonality of insect pollinators across an urban gradient in the eastern United States. I found that insect pollinators generally have longer and later seasons in more urbanized areas. This pattern may be partially explained by the urban heat island effect—a phenomenon in which cities are warmer than the surrounding landscape.
These findings have important consequences for urban plants, which tend to flower earlier in cities. If pollinators are unwilling or unable to shift their activity to keep pace with earlier blooms, plants and their pollinators may fall out of sync, potentially reducing pollination of urban plants. Further research is essential to better understand urban plant-pollinator relationships and to help urban communities create environments with thriving plant and pollinator populations.
The 2025 BES Conference drew approximately 1,500 attendees from around the world and provided me with a valuable opportunity to present my findings and gain insight from other pollinator researchers. I am grateful to the Coral Gables Garden Club for its continued support of my research and professional development.