Stephanie Brien

PhD student in Genetics and Genomics

My background is in veterinary medicine and my interest in One Health led me to intercalate in biological anthropology and to undertake an MSc in epidemiology. I have gained a broad range of clinical veterinary experience, working with domestic animals, livestock and laboratory animals in the UK. I developed a particular interest in emergency medicine, and this interest, along with my breadth of experience, provided a good foundation for working with wildlife. I spent over a year working with primates at Ape Action Africa in Cameroon and then diversified my knowledge of tropical wildlife at Abidjan National Zoo in Cote d’Ivoire. The zoo cares for a broad range of indigenous species and regularly receives birds, reptiles and mammals donated from the pet trade or confiscated by the authorities. In conjunction with providing general veterinary care and capacity building, I improved the quarantine procedures and nutrition programme, and assisted with the world’s largest breeding programme for the critically endangered West African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus). Alongside clinical work, I have engaged in a diverse range of research projects from studying Bluetongue infection in livestock in East Anglia, to monkeypox in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Cameroon, and the field ecology of black-bellied pangolins (Phataginus tetradactyla) with Project Mecistops in Cote d’Ivoire. My PhD project unites my interests in population health, conservation biology and interdisciplinary research.

Project Title:

Integrating information on disease risk and immunogenetic diversity to guide conservation decision-making in a wild ungulate reintroduction programme.

Scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah) are a species of sub-desert-adapted antelope native to northern Africa. Their numbers declined dramatically throughout the twentieth century, primarily due to overhunting, but exacerbated by habitat loss and marginalisation as a result of competition with livestock. Since the year 2000 they have been classified as extinct in the wild by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). A handful of long-term reintroduction programmes are currently underway, which aim to improve aridland biodiversity and maintain self-sustainable populations of oryx. In Tunisia, oryx populations have been released into fenced enclosures in protected areas since the 1980s. In Chad, an ongoing phased release programme into the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Wildlife Reserve, an unfenced area similar in size to Scotland, commenced in 2016.

I will conduct fieldwork to assess the infectious disease status of livestock and semi-wild populations of oryx. Collecting invasive samples, particularly in wildlife, presents ethical, welfare and financial challenges, so I will explore whether novel molecular diagnostic tools can be used to identify blood borne pathogens in faecal samples. I will also investigate the diversity of immune markers in the genome of oryx to try and predict the population-level resistance to infectious disease. The data collected will be used to forecast the outcomes of management interventions, such as controlled trial releases. This information will contribute to the disease risk assessment required in order to consider release of the Tunisian oryx back in to the wild.

My PhD is part of the EASTBIO Doctoral Training Programme and is co-funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Marwell Wildlife. I am supervised by Rob Ogden, Director of Conservation Science; Mark Bronsvoort, Personal Chair of Veterinary Epidemiology; and John Hammond, Group Leader in Genetics, Genomics and Immunology at the Pirbright Institute.