Mario started his academic career studying plant-animal interactions in the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He went on to complete a PhD at Duke University studying the evolution of plant sexual diversity using the potato genus, Solanum, as a model system. After a two year postdoc at the University of Toronto studying the evolution of pollination strategies, Mario moved to the United Kingdom as a Lecturer at the University of Stirling. Over the past 10 years Mario has studied buzz-pollination, a peculiar mechanism in which some bees use high frequency vibrations to remove pollen from flowers with specialised morphologies. His current work on buzz pollination focuses on understanding how floral characteristics including size and shape affect their interaction with buzz-pollinating bees.