S. salamandra fastuosa - Spain 2014

The defence was online due to COVID restrictions, but after a presentation and two hours of questioning its now officially Dr. Kevin! Big thanks to the opponents Miguel Vences, Kathryn Elmer, Rui Rebelo and José Melo-Ferreira and for everybody who listened to me talk about amphibian genomics on youtube for a few hours. Now a one month break and then time to start a postdoc at CIBIO and continue working on these amazing critters.

It has been a long few months of covid lockdowns and thesis writing lockdowns, but I finally handed in my thesis! Its been quite a few years but very happy with the final product. Obviously a big thank you to my Advisors and all other co-authors, friends, family and every person and amphibian that helped out in this process. You can find a lot more words on that in the acknowledgements, and a lot more words on amphibian genomics in the other few 100 pages.

This manuscript in collaboration with

This paper led by Christophe Dufresnes and Glib Mazepa at the University of Laussane investigates the evolutionary history of Bufotes toads across its range using ddRAD sequencing and mitochodrial hapotypes exploring many of the fascinating aspects of this study system such as allopolyploidization and high mito-nuclear discordance. It also describes to new species B. cypriensis and B. perrini.

One of my first projects as a geneticist was on one of the most range-restricted vertebrates in the United States, the Shenandoah salamander. This cute critter might looks similar to its sister species, the omni-present redbacked salamader but is adapted to only three mountaintops in Virginia. We compare genetic diversity to landscape features to try and figure out what restricts its dispersal. Another fruitful collaboration with Evan Grant's lab at USGS!

Our paper on the relationship between MHC genotypes and Ranavirus infection in Maryland woodfrogs is out in Immunogenetics! Started as a small side-project many moons ago now finally published thanks to hard work by the co-authors Anna, Carly, Rob and Evan!

The tortoise paper strikes again. We won the Smithsonian's Secretary Research Award and were presented with a plaque at a breakfast "gala" at the American History Museum by Secretary Skorton.

Our paper on the effects of translocations on male Desert tortoise fecundity won the Robert C. Stebbins award at the annual Desert Tortoise Council Conference! Rob Fleischer gave the plenary talk to an audience including tortoise researchers, wildlife managers and tortoise enthusiasts.

Thierry Chambert's manuscript on occupancy modelling has been published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution! The paper describes a new model that includes species mis-identification error and nondetection to improve occupancy models. We provided the genetic data for the Species ID for two closely related Plethodon salamanders that are sometimes misidentified in the field due to their similarity and overlapping habitats.

Our paper on MHC variation in Rana chiricahuensis was published in the journal Conservation Genetics. We genotyped adults across the US range to describe the MHC variation in the species and also genotyped over 250 metamorphs just before their release from the captive breeding facilities at the Phoenix Zoo. When we went back to catch the survivors a year later we found an association between over winter survival (when Bd infections are high), and the type of MHC-allele the froglets had.

For this paper published in the journal Developmental and Comparative Immunology we developed primers to sequence the entire exon 2 and parts of the flanking intron for the MHC class II locus across several genera of Ranid frogs. We tested them using both Sanger, 454 and Illumina sequencing and describe the diversity we found across 18 different species with notes on selection and trans-species polymorphism.