Congratulations to Denise Wawman!
Congratulations to Denise Wawman, who defended her thesis on Monday 2nd June 2025
Denise successfully defended her thesis on 2nd June 2025 with examiners Jenny Dunn (University of Keele) and Sonya Clegg (University of Oxford). Her thesis entitled "The ecology and taxonomy of louse flies (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) and their role as vectors of avian disease” was supervised by Ben Sheldon (EGI, Oxford) and Adrian L. Smith (Oxford).
The thesis used data from 15 years of ringing Dunnocks in Denise’s garden and over 4300 flies, collected as part of her Mapping the UK’s Flat Flies Project, a citizen science project in which British Trust for Ornithology bird ringers were asked to collect louse (or flat) flies that left birds during ringing. She showed that three species of these blood-sucking avian ectoparasites, that had previously only been recorded as vagrants, were breeding the in United Kingdom. Some louse fly species had undergone major range shifts over the last 60 years, and host switching had also occurred. DNA sequencing, with the help of Steven Fiddaman (Oxford) and Ben Jones and Nick Johnson (APHA), detected the first sequences of avian pox in louse flies, and this combined with phenological evidence, strongly suggests that louse flies may be vectoring avian pox in Dunnocks. Additionally, Denise reviewed the taxonomic issues, exploring the in the definition species the Finch Louse Fly Ornithomya fringillina using both morphometric and phylogenetic analyses.
So far three papers and a dataset have been published, with a further four in review or in revision. An additional manuscript describing a new species of louse fly found by Borja Mila (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid) is in review, and one on molecular work, lead by Ben Jones (APHA), on Deer Keds Lipoptena cervi collected as part of the mapping project is in revision. While in Oxford, Denise took the opportunity to contribute to the Darwin Tree of Life Project, and has so far coauthored 31 published genome notes, and collected several more specimens that are currently in the sequencing pipeline.
Denise will be remaining as a research associate in the Department of Biology. She will be studying keds (the Hippoboscids found on mammals) in the UK as a Varley-Gradwell Travelling Fellow in Insect Ecology, but will continue to run the Mapping the UK’s Flat Flies Project and remains the UK Recorder for Hippoboscidae.
