Olivia Carril

Entomologist

Olivia Carril has been studying wild bees for over 25 years in environments throughout the United States.  She received her BS from Utah State University, studying the bees of Pinnacles National Monument.  She also received her MSc from Utah State University, conducting a study of the bees of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  She received her PhD from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she studied the evolution of host plant preference in a specialist bee, Diadasia.  More recently, she has worked on studying the pollinators of New Mexico’s rare plants and has continued to conduct surveys of bee communities on public lands in an effort to establish baseline population information.  She is the author of three books on bees:  The Bees in Your Backyard, Common Bees of the Eastern U.S., and Common Bees of the Western U.S.  She lives in Santa Fe, NM, where she teaches middle school science at the Santa Fe Girls School.