Sophie DUPONT

Impact of pollutants on the Fibropapillomatosis prevalence in green turtles from Martinique.

This study is funded by the European FEDER funding, holded by Damien Chevallier, The post-doctoral position is co-supervised by Damien Chevallier and Dr Mathieu Giraudeau. In collaboration with Dr Jérôme Fort, Prof Paco Bustamante – ecotoxicological experts, and Dr Guillaume Le Loc’h – virology expert.

The Fibropapillomatosis (FP) is an epizootic disease affecting immature green turtles all around the world. This transmissible disease – suspected to be due to a Chelonid Herpevirus (ChHV5) infection – is characterized by the development of external (on the eyes and flippers particularly) and internal tumors which provoke disorientation, buoyancy disorders and in the most severe cases, death of the individual. Concerningly, the highest FP frequencies occur in anthropic areas. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that anthropic pollution is one of the main causes of the FP emergence. However, only a limited number of studies focused on the role of pollutants as disease trigger.

This post-doctoral project aims to state on the implication of anthropic pollutants (and which one.s) in both FP prevalence and ChHV5 viral activity. To do so, I’m combining ecotoxicological, physiological, clinical and virological approaches, to study the association between green turtle ecotoxicological and FP features (lesion characteristics and ChHV5 presence notably). By taking advantage of the high-site fidelity observed in this species and the long-term monitoring program conducted since 2007 at the Martinique Island, I will conduct a promising longitudinal study on the effect of pollutants both at the tumor and turtle scales.