Recent projects
Large scale biodiversity surveys on land using airborne eDNA
to come soon
Photo: Allen Tian
Photo: Lucas Labeur
A Tree of Life metabarcoding approach to assess freshwater ecosystem health
Freshwater ecosystems are complex, diverse and face a variety of imminent threats that have led to changes in both ecosystem structure and function. It is urgent that we develop and standardize monitoring tools allowing for rapid and comprehensive assessment of freshwater communities to understand their changing dynamics and to inform conservation. Environmental DNA surveys offer a means to inventory and monitor aquatic diversity, yet most studies focus on one or a few taxonomic groups only. In this study, we sought to 1) identify thoroughly validated, cost-efficient primer pair combinations that maximize detection of broad swaths of freshwater diversity, and 2) facilitate future primer pair selection by creating a free online and user-friendly tool.
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Wild turkey predation on Blue racer
This project is part of a plan to inform several key recovery actions for blue racer in Ontario. Blue racer was added to the Species at Risk in Ontario list in 2008 due to its existence in Canada comprising only a small and isolated population on Pelee Island, and due to marked population decline. Wild turkeys have been introduced on Pelee Island for hunting activities, and are suspected to feed on SAR species such as blue racer. The goal is to develop a ddPCR assay to assess wild turkey predation on blue racer (Pelee island).
Breeding phenology of a threatened frog species using eDNA and automatic acoustic monitoring
Climate change can drive shifts in breeding phenology, leading to phenological mismatches and conservation concern. Assessing phenology in rare or cryptic species can be challenging. In this study, we test eDNA ddPCR as a non-invasive tool to investigate the breeding phenology of a trilling chorus frogs in Eastern Ontario. (Chen*, Tournayre* et al. 2023)
Photo: Allen Tian
Past projects
Population genetics and diet of the greater horseshoe bat in Western France
During my PhD, I worked on the greater horseshoe (GH) bat, an insectivorous bat species who lives in close proximity to humans. In 2016, this bat species was listed as Vulnerable on the regional Red list of the French Poitou-Charentes region.
I used genetic tools to delineate and identify potential vulnerable populations (microsatellites genotyping of ~1,000 patagium samples from France, Spanish basque Country, England and Tunisia; Tournayre et al. 2019).
Then we developed a metabarcoding approach for the parallel identification of bat species and their preys without an over-amplification of predator DNA (Galan et al. 2018) and compared twelve metabarcoding primer sets to optimize insectivorous bat diet description (Tournayre et al. 2020). Finally, I investigated whether life cycle and landscape influenced the diversity and the composition of the GH diet in the Poitou-Charentes region (Tournayre et al. 2021).
Changes of immune gene expression along a biological invasion gradient of two rodent species
Understanding the mechanisms underlying invasion success is crucial in order to identify efficient control strategies. According to the Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability (EICA) hypothesis, invasive species should reduce their immune investment to the benefit of other life-history traits, such as growth and/or reproduction, which are favorable to their demographic expansion. For my second-year master project I aimed at testing this hypothesis. I used a high-throughput quantitative PCR method to analyze the individual level of variation in immune gene expression of invasive house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) and black rat (Rattus rattus) along well-characterised invasion gradients in Senegal.
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Interactive effects of ticks and fleas on the reproductive success of two sympatric bird species
The aim of this study was to understand how ectoparasites influence the reproductive success of the Great Tit (Parus major) and the Collared-flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis). Nestboxes were infested with the hen flea Ceratophyllus gallinae, controlling both its abundance and prevalence. Each nest was monitored and birds were captured to sample ticks. My project, as a first-year master student, was to identify the ticks species based on their morphology and test whether the abundance and the prevalence of the hen flea and/or ticks influenced the number of fledgings (as a proxy of the reproductive success).
Role of chemical communication in the foraging behavior of an invasive ant species
My undergraduate project was on the role of chemical communication in the foraging behavior of an invasive ant species: the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). We experimentally tested whether this ant species always ends up taking a single foraging trail, whether the chosen foraging trail was optimized (the shortest one) and whether it was associated with pheromons.
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