Boise State University Master of Science in Raptor Biology student Sage Dale defended her thesis, “Using Comparative Genomics to Characterize Immune Genes Between the Holarctic Gyrfalcon and the Globally Distributed Peregrine Falcon” on the afternoon of February 17, 2026. Dale’s main advisor is Stephanie Galla (Boise State University Raptor Research Center, Biological Sciences), and her committee also includes Sven Buerki (Boise State University Biological Sciences) and Travis Booms (Master of Science in Raptor Biology, ’02, currently Alaska Department of Fish and Game Research Wildlife Biologist).
ABSTRACT
The poleward shift of vectors of disease has increased opportunities for novel pathogen exposure to high latitude communities, at greatest risk are immunologically naive Arctic wildlife. The Gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus) is a sentinel of the Arctic that provide an important measure of widespread avian health across Arctic ecosystems. Due to historically low virulence throughout the Arctic, Gyrfalcons and other Arctic wildlife have had limited selective pressures to develop mechanisms of immune defense. Previous studies have found little genetic diversity in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) of falcons, an essential protein in the adaptive immune response. Toll like-Receptors (TLRs) are another functional protein for pathogen recognition of the innate immune system but have only been explored in a few falcon species and never in any Arctic avian species. This thesis leverages high quality reference and resequenced genomes, a comparative genomic approach, and bioinformatic tools to provide the first characterization of the innate immune genes of Toll-like Receptors (TLRs) between a specialized Arctic raptor with suspected low immune competence (the Gyrfalcon) and its globally distributed congener (the Peregrine Falcon, Falco peregrinus). We found TLRs to be closely related between falcon species, with Gyrfalcons showing less TLR diversity in heterozygosity, SNP richness, nucleotide diversity, and number of haplotypes. The genomic repositories and bioinformatic approaches used here are a powerful tool that can be widely applied at low cost to provide important insights on the adaptive captivity of species for conservation on a rapidly changing planet.