Marina Montresor is senior scientist at the Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples (Italy). She studied at the University of Padua (Italy), where she got trained in taxonomy of marine phytoplankton. In 1989 she got a position as research scientist at Stazione Zoologica where she has coordinated the laboratory of Ecology and Evolution of Plankton. She has been member of the faculty and organizer of several editions of the Advanced Phytoplankton Course for Taxonomy and Systematics. She served in the editorial board of several scientific journals (Phycologia, Journal of Phycology, Protists, Estuaries and Coasts and Harmful Algae). Marina Montresor is presently member of the Scientific Steering Committee of GlobalHAB.
The research interests of Marina Montresor focus on the diversity and ecology of marine phytoplankton, with particular attention on life histories of microalgae. These organisms have multiphasic life cycles that include dormant and sexual phases, which have implications for the dynamics and genetic structure of their populations. The research projects in which she has been involved included studies coupling morphological and molecular approaches to the study of the diversity of phytoplankton species and studies on the life history of dinoflagellates and diatoms through experimental investigations in the laboratory and in the natural environment. Genomic approaches are currently applied to investigate the molecular mechanisms that regulate the sexual phase of the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata a species that produces the toxin domoic acid.