DPhil. Student

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Irem Sepil

Irem Sepil

Details

Name: Irem Sepil
Position: DPhil. Student
Email: irem.sepil@zoo.ox.ac.uk

Autobiography

I come from Ankara, Turkey. I studied my Bsc in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Bogazici University. Following my graduation in 2005, I worked as a research assistant for The Center of Tropical Research, UCLA for two years. There I completed a project exploring the effects of deforestation on the prevalence of blood-borne parasites in African rainforest birds, under the supervision of Camille Bonneaud and Thomas B. Smith. I was also interested in the interaction between hosts' plumage coloration and haematozoan prevalence in Olive Sunbird Cyanomitra olivacea. I began a DPhil with Ben Sheldon studying MHC diversity in great tits in October 2008.

Research Activities

For my thesis I am investigating the role that parasite-driven selection and sexual selection play in the maintenance of MHC diversity and the effect of MHC variants on the fitness of their carriers, in the Wytham Wood great tit population. Having characterized variation at the MHC in my study population, my goal is to screen all breeding adults of Wytham great tit population to assess diversity at the most variable regions of MHC genes using a novel application of ultra-high-throughput Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology. The population of great tits at Wytham Woods is an exceptional wild bird model system, since intensive study over several decades has generated important insights into the evolution, population demography and host-parasite interactions of this species. The study system also enables individual fitness and survival analysis as the birds are non-migratory and young settle close to where they were born. Therefore this population provides a unique opportunity to study the selective mechanisms acting on MHC genes in a well-studied natural population, and to define how genes could affect individual fitness.

Selected Recent Papers

Sehgal, R.N.M., Buermann, W., Harrigan, R.J., Bonneaud, C., Loiseau, C., Chasar, A., Sepil, I., Valkiunas, G., Iezhova, T.A., Saatchi, S. & Smith, T.B. (2010) Spatially explicit predictions of blood parasites in a widely distributed African rainforest bird. Proc. R. Soc. Lon. B (Published online)

Bonneaud, C., Sepil, I., Mila, B., Buermann, W., Pollinger, J., Sehgal, R.N.M., Valkiunas, G., Iezhova, T.A., Saatchi, S., Smith, T.B. (2009) Habitat specificities of Plasmodium parasites in rainforest birds of Cameroon. Journal of Tropical Ecology 25, 439-447.

Smith, T.B., Mila, B., Grether, G.Y.F., Slabbekoorn, H., Sepil, I., Buermann, W., Saatchi, S., Pollinger, J.P. (2008) Evolutionary consequences of human disturbance in a rainforest bird species from Central Africa. Molecular Ecology17, 58-71.