Michelle Moyal, DVM: Welcome everyone to the Cornell Veterinary Podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into all of the discovery, care and learning that happens at you know where; Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. I'm your fabulous host, Dr. Michelle Moyal, visiting assistant clinical professor, and hopefully again your favorite Purina veterinarian.

And might I add, a person who has finally caught up on all of the seasons of The Bear and Only Murders in the Building. And I think that is quite an accomplishment. Now, speaking of accomplishment. I have a guest on today who, destroys my accomplishment of binge watching a TV show by far. Dr. Amandine Gamble, Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health is joining us. I'm very excited. I'm going to read, I'm going to read this bio is amazing. She studies the dynamics between disease pathogens, and their hosts. You know me, people, you know, I'll ask her about it. Especially birds and bats.

Very cool. She holds a veterinary degree from Alfort National Veterinary School, a Master's of Science in Animal Physiology and Behavior from Strausberg University and a PhD, you know, no big deal, in population biology and ecology from Montpelier University. All of those institutions in France, which I would also love to touch upon. She has done her postdoc and fellowship training at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, at UCLA and the University of Glasgow in the UK. I love me a world Traveler. Welcome to the show, Dr. Gamble. Thank you for joining us.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And nice meeting you all and a very flattering introduction.

Host: Yes. Oh my God. That took, it took a lot of breath, but that, that's an incredible bio. So if everybody's listened before, I hope I have some return listeners; they know that I have a set of questions kind of already for you, but I just want to dive into your travel just quick and I'll ask you more later, but can you tell me, do you have a favorite place to travel to before we dive into all your science?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I guess it's a mix of like, I like going to new places, but I do have like a sweet spot in my heart for the Falkland Islands where I do my field work. So I guess we might talk more about that. I love islands and that's one of the place where I, almost get to call home now. So I really love that place.

Host: Very cool first of all. I'm like, I get to call Ithaca home and I love Ithaca, but your version of home here is very exciting. Okay, so let me jump in because the info I have says you started out as a veterinarian and I think it's very interesting to hear about people's journeys because a lot of us start as a veterinarian.

I think, you know, just thinking about treating animals, traditionally she says in air quotes, for those of you who can't see me right, like in a hospital setting. Did you think about going into practice or did you know you wanted to go into research? Like you were immediately interested?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So I didn't know research at all when I started Vet school, so I wasn't considering research. I wasn't considering practice is a bit more complicated question, I think I had it in mind just because, you know, when you're in Vet school, you, you always hear about like, yeah, when you're going to have your own practice, you're going to do this and that.

But I was also was looking a little bit at like other things. So like, I was thinking maybe I can work with wildlife and get to travel. And also I grew up with Huskies. So I was really into like reading books about like explorers visiting remote places with their dogs and also like racing with the dog.

So I was interested in maybe being a like sport animal vet, that kind of thing. But then during vet school, I met, one of my teacher was also a researcher in animal behavior, introduced me to research and I was like, yes, this is what I want to do. So that's during vet school that it happens.

Host: That is very interesting. For those of you, again, not watching, or maybe those of you in small animal medicine, when she said Huskies, I went, Ooh. And that's because I pictured the husky like yowl, right? Like they have a very characteristic voice and they tend to use it. I just wanted to put that out there.

But they are an incredibly cool breed and actually Purina has done some research on sled dogs, like working dogs. So that is really neat to hear that that's kind of what brought you into this. And I like hearing that someone introduced you to research. We talk a lot about mentorship here. So that's really great.

So is that what got you interested in disease ecology? Like how did you get there?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, so I think it was, so when I discovered research and it was again, this person that, introduced me to research was working. She did a very cool PhD thesis on, um social thermal regulation in penguins. So that's when penguins like herd together to keep each other warm.

Host: What? Okay. So all of these penguins are huddled to, to get warm, but they have these social interactions because they're so, close together, like the New York City subway.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah.

Host: Yeah.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Exactly the same setup. So she was working on like that interaction between so animals between one another, but also like the animals with the environment and just like, you know, how do you, how do you survive in a very cool place? And so is so interesting because it's mixing, you know, things that I was interested in, but I didn't know about like animal behavior and ecology, but also things I had learned in Vet school, like physiology. So I, started looking that way and more like the ecology part of things because I was like, oh, that's something I don't know yet, but I would love to learn.

And then I found an opportunity to start a PhD on infectious disease ecology. And so I had the same idea of like, oh, I can use everything I learned in Vet school regarding disease. So I can start not completely useless, but still get to discover ecology for which I was, yeah, I didn't know anything, so that was like the part I was, I was learning.

So just like a nice mix between my background and my aspirations, I would say.

Host: Will you share with our listeners for some who don't know what ecology is?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So ecology, I guess we use the term for like different meanings. Ecology means, it's the science of the interactions between uh, living organism and their environment. So their environments include other living organism that can be from the same species or different species, and also the physical environment.

So, you know, like the weather and the landscape and so on. For instance, when we talk about host parasite interaction, it's like the ecology of the interactions between, like a host. So it can be a, an animal and anything that would parasite the animal. So virus, a bacteria, fungi.

Host: So when you first explained it, I was like, oh, it's like a fish living in the ocean, right? There are other creatures in there. It's also interacting with the water, but I want to make sure that people understand it even could be like a virus living in an animal or a human that also has these interactions and those are very important to figure out for disease. Is that?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. And you can even go like at a smaller scale and you can imagine like within host ecology. So it could be like, for instance, studying interactions between two different viruses within a host or like the virus with the immune system of the host. So it's interactions at different scales.

 This ecology is very cool because it integrates all of that. So you can have the obviously the immune system is something very important to understand, to understand how an animal might control an infection. But also you can go as a way to like understanding how different population of animals are connected to animal movements to try to understand how the pathogen might spread with those animals. Everything from the molecules up to like the world.

Host: The physical, that's just such a little topic. I don't understand. Wow. So easy and I very much appreciate that you developed this interest for ecology and you said you knew nothing about it, and then you took all of your veterinary training and then look at where it's brought you.

That's really exciting because I talk a lot about maybe not knowing your journey in Vet Med or maybe changing your journey, and you're like a beautiful example of that.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yes. We can start our journey in our career like without knowing what's going to happen and it's fine. It can take more or less time to a way.

Host: She's a very smart doctor and researcher and she said it will be fine.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, it would be fine. You know, I'm surrounded by a lot of people who had that vocation for research since the beginning. But also a lot of other people who thought they would become physicists and now they are biologists or people who thought they would work in a bank and now they're doing mathematical modeling to study species interactions, in like very remote places. So like everything can lead to everything else. But also like when I was in vet school, I heard all the time, you know, you're learning all those very transferrable skills and I think it's quite vague when you hear that, you're like, oh yeah. But yeah, it, it is true. So I still had to learn a lot of things after, but I think we also like just train to learn because we have to learn so much in Vet school that we we get that just like foundational knowledge and way of working that makes us able to learn more and do whatever we want.

Host: Yeah. I love that. Ooh, do whatever we want. I blacked out when she said mathematical modeling, but I'm back. I'm back everybody. And I think why I really love hearing this. And for everybody listening, this is a recurring theme here on the Cornell Vet Podcast I love to talk about something called diversity of thought.

You're working with a team that are not just veterinarians, like you said. You're talking with physicists, you're brain, you're talking to mathematicians, and that is what helps make projects and research thrive. So I really appreciate that you brought that up. So I have that you've done a lot of research on sub Antarctic seabirds. So, well, one, what does sub antarctic mean for everyone listening, where in the world is that, and why these birds? So just,

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. So we have, you know about Antarctica, so sub Antarctica is just the part of the world that is slightly above Antarctica. So it's not yet completely Antarctica, but almost.

Host: Ish. It's Antarctic ish. I've that. That's medical terms people.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So at the beginning I said like, uh, the Falkland islands is a place that I really love. So it's an archipelago that is located between the tip of south America and the tip of Antarctica. So it's right in between. So besides, you know, the location, when you look at the globe, it's also characterized by some, you know, specific traits. It's closed or in an ocean that we call the southern ocean that we tend to forget when we draw all the

Host: Yeah, we just ignore that ocean. We're like, is it the Atlantic? Is

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So it's at the bottom of the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. But it's, it has, its like its own currents and you find like very specific species there. So those, Subantartic islands are in the southern ocean. And we do find species that you might have heard of, like penguins, albatrosses, lots of seals that kind of things live on those island.

Host: Wow. And so then what drew you to like sea birds. Why, why them?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, so I think like the full story, and it probably loops back to

Host: I was after. That's what

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: To the Husky thing. I think it's because I grew up, like I had Husky, so I was reading books on people who were like exploring the Arctic and also at the time the Antarctic, because so a long time ago we used to have dogs in Antarctica.

So I was reading all of those books and when I randomly got an opportunity to do an internship in a lab that was studying penguin behavior, I didn't really care about birds or penguins, but I was like, oh, this is like the systems I've heard about when I was a kid.

You know, the snow and the ice pack and all that. I got excited about that and I started working on penguins that way. And then when I started, so at that time it was only data analysis. I want to say noting winds were involved in my internship, only the, the datas that were collected by someone else. So just to say like, statistical analysis can take you all the way to Antarctica too.

Host: I'm sorry, I blacked out again. She said statistical analysis. Okay.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: But they can take you to cool places. That was the key message. So like if you are offered a cool data set to analyze, go for it. Because could be the first step to something bigger.

Host: All of the data sets there. Right. And it could be starting So this is I think, great because you highlighted that when you were a child, like literally. The draw for the snow and the cold from this other breed you were interested in, brought you to this place and these data sets and all of this research led you then to these birds.

And I just think that that's so cool. She ran towards the snow people and I'm in Ithaca trying to run away. Just kidding. I love it. It's just, it's sometimes a little too much snow. So that's really cool. Okay, so we kind of heard how you ended up focusing your research there. So what, is your research, like what's happening there that maybe people should know about?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So besides my draw for the snow, and the animals on the snow.

Host: And learning. Yes, she's

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. So one of the reason why some people work on seabirds, besides like some people can just be passionate about seabirds and they've always wanted to do that and then do that, but also they're just great models like, uh, study models for research.

So you may imagine if you are doing a PhD on polar bears, you know, you're lucky.

Host: Yes, polar It's in my head. I've got it.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: If you are lucky, you might get to see like 10, 20 per hour during your PhD and like get samples from a few of them. It everything is very intense to handle them and so on. If you work with seabirds, you go on on island, they always come to the same place.

At the same moment of the year, and you have tens of thousand of them. So you can collect a lot of samples because they're quite big birds. We put rings on them to identify them. So like a leg ring. Um. And we can like recapture the same bird from one year to another because they're very, we say like faithful to their breeding site.

So they find a nest and then they will try to stay on that one nest from one year to another. So for instance, we can track the whole life of, for instance, on our albatross, they can live like really decades, like 40, 50, 60 years. And you can capture the same bird every year. And so you can track, you know, the birds that are infected with one infectious disease, are they more likely to die or not?

And are they developing some immunity, how long they're keeping their immunity for. So all those questions that are usually really hard to address in wildlife because it's really hard to access the animals. It's really hard to recapture the same individual, we can do that with sea birds.

And also they form colonies, so you really know like where they're going to be and when, and you can really easily study things like, you have like discreet units of thinking. I, it gets a bit abstract, but what I mean is, you know, if you go in a forest, you can find a mouse anywhere and you don't know where that mouse is coming from because it could have, you know, crossed the road and come from the other side.

But like, because sea birds are like, oh, this is my colony, I live here, you can really compare like one colony to another. You know that the bird in one colony is very

Host: their, their own independent populations.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So the way I talk about it sometimes, like for the metaphor for fellow researchers, every colony or every island is like a gigantic Petri dish. You know, one replicates. And sometimes, so for instance, one of the questions I study, is the impact of invasive species.

So in particular, rats and mice on islands. And whether they can act as reservoirs for some pathogens that would impact the wildlife. So whether they can carry some pathogens that you wouldn't find otherwise on the islands, that they brought with them or they're maintaining and then transfer, like transmit to the wildlife.

 In the same archipelago you can have islands where rats and mice were introduced next to an island where they have never been introduced. You can, you can compare. So you have like a case control study. But it was you didn't put the rats, they came on their own.

Or like someone brought by by accident. Uh, but you can still like draw on that like natural experimental setup that you have.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: Wow. So. I love what I'm hearing. One, I love that we're studying seabirds because they just really like routine, right? They're like, oh no, I summer here. Like this is where I go. My people will be there, my family will be there. And then you naturally can compare those. Wow, I'm so excited. I'm hitting the microphones.

Like you can compare those families. And then do you find that, I'm really fascinated by this example you used with the rats, do you find that some of this research designs itself? You're like, oh, these rats weren't on this island. They were there by mistake on a ship, or who knows? And now you have something to compare it to because you have disease in a population you didn't expect it to be in.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: The research I do, a lot of it is like, everyone has a lot of questions to like, understand the world, but like finding the systems where you can address this question is really an important part of the job. For a very concrete example, and like one study system that I think is, very cool, during my PhD I worked on that island called Amsterdam Island, in the middle of the Southern Indian Ocean. And on this island we've had outbreaks of avian cholera. So it's a disease that, yes, so it's a disease that is caused by some bacteria that we call pasta for like the vets in the room.

We know that this is from poultry. It's been, you know, every now and then we have outbreaks in poultry farms. It kills a lot of chicken and turkey. But every now and then we also have outbreaks in wildlife. In most places where we have had outbreaks, you usually have an outbreak one year, but then, because all of the birds are migrating at sea during winter, so that's what seabirds do.

Like, they're called seabirds because the come on land really just to breed, but all of the rest of their life is at sea. They sleep at sea. They, they fish at sea. So they're really on their nests only when they need to incubate and take care of the chick. But the rest of the time there's.

So when they go at sea, because they're all scattered all over that huge ocean, there is very little opportunities for disease transmission. So most of the disease transmission happen on the island during the breeding season.

So yeah, so when they go away in winter, usually when there are pathogens, that's like a time where they could fade out, so just disappear from the population. So it's kind of like, you know, these are outbreaks. We have them when the kids are going back to school, but then summer vacation, everyone recovers. So the same, the same kind of dynamic. Yeah.

There is that one island to Stan Island where we had just repeated outbreaks every year that we would have outbreaks. And we were wondering how are the birds keeping that bacteria. Why do they keep being infected? So eventually we thought, okay, there's one species that remains on the island

all year long and that's introduced rats. So we have introduced rats and mice there and that's all of the native wildlife is migratory, the only resident wildlife.

So here, yeah, that's introduced rats and mice. So we looked in the rats, we found the bacteria in the rats, including in winter when the birds are not here.

So I said, okay, it looks like we might have a potential reservoir here. So like something that is keeping the bacteria on the island, and sustaining it, on the island. So that was our, like the first step of the research. And the second step that is still ongoing is that because rodents they, so they might act as reservoirs for disease, but they also have a lot of other negative impact on the system.

So they prey on the eggs, they prey on the chicks. They also eat the native plants, and some of the smaller birds, so most seabirds are ground nesting, so they nest on the ground, so not in trees. So they are accessible for predators quite easily. And so some of the species are locally extinct from the island because rodents are eating, eating them like the small seabirds.

So the nature reserve that is managing this island has, launched a big program to remove the rats and mice from the island. And I just did that last, so winter there. So last summer for us. And now we are going to see if removing the rats and mice is also going to remove the disease, what we, yeah. So it's what we would expect based on like our understanding of the system, but it's like a very cool way to test it experimentally. So I was saying before, like we didn't put the rats and the mice, but we can remove them now. So it's very expensive. But we can do it. We have that pre post treatment now that we can look at.

So now the, in the coming years, we are going to keep on tracking the dynamic of the disease, see if it's still around or if it went away with ordinance. We can address that kind of question in like those very cool opportunistic experiments in a way.

It's not like want to like, okay, this is our protocol. We are going to

Host: That's what I was thinking. Yeah. So it inadvertently presents itself to you. Not like perfectly, but it it's opportunistic for sure. I very much appreciate that you brought up, I haven't, first of all, I haven't discussed pastoral mul mulda in many, many years, probably since before I took my boards.

But why I like it is you are bringing it up with seabirds and then you mentioned that other people have experienced it with poultry population, chicken populations, so it can affect farms here. It can affect, so again, your research may seem rather unique to some, but the organism you're studying can affect so many populations.

So in my brain, even though you're studying seabirds, it still has just far reaching impact and I, I really appreciate that. Right, because there are mice and rats on farms that yeah naturally and things like and I don't, I don't know if equal, but it is nice to hear that perspectives maybe can shift in another part of veterinary medicine based on what you're doing.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, the big question I'm interested in is, trying to understand, so I look at pathogen that can infect several different species of hosts, so like multi-host pathogens that the thing I really like with them is trying to understand, okay, we have all those different species that can be infected.

But then because all the species are different, inherently they're going to play a different role in the dynamic of the pathogen. So for instance, I was talking about the rats and mice that can be a reservoir for a pathogen because they have that one specificity in that system that they stay there while the other animals are going away.

But then they're not going to be the one who are spreading the pathogen because they can't leave the island. But so we have other, like the birds now can potentially be the vector for the pathogen to move it around. So our research is really, trying to link the ecology. So like again, like the way those animals are interacting with their environment and their, other animals from their old species and other species.

So the ecology of the host with the dynamic of the pathogen, and now the different ecologies are driving different roles in the epidemiological network of this pathogen.

Host: This is really interesting because she's studying a pathogen that can go into multiple different species and in some species they just hold it. Right. Doesn't make them ill potentially. It may not kill them, but they certainly can spread the disease and then in another species it might, in fact decimate a population, injure them. So how it acts like we're talking, I love this, this ecology. This is like ecology in a nutshell, based on what you were saying earlier. Because it really does affect the environment and other animals living in it. That's really exciting. I don't want any animals to die, but it's very exciting to hear about, and so I thought to myself when you're like, oh, I was in the Falkland Islands.

I'm like, I wonder what the WiFi's like, right? Like, how is it like working? I, you can't really get a pizza delivered. What is it like working in this part of the world?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So the Falkland Island is, its own beast because it's like, the only subantartic island that has a established civilian population. So most of the other islands in that part of the world, they only have research stations. But on the Falkland Island, there's an established population. So I would say people like you and I, but they do have a slightly different lifestyle. So wifi is very bad.

But it's

Yeah.

Host: But it's there. Got it.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: It's there, but it's, it really looks like the wifi, like we had it in the early 2000. So it's like, you know, you have to count, you have to be careful how much data you're using, and so on. So I'm not as responsive on my email when I'm in the field.

Host: Understandable friends, family, listen, she can't get back to you right now.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: No but otherwise I would say, so how is it to do research there? So, on one side it looks very extreme because it's so far, but it's also not as extreme as some places a lot closer to us. So, for instance, it's, you know, there's no risk of, there's no tropical disease there.

So, you know, I think about like my friends who are like working in South America, like Northern South America where you can get dengue and you have to do all those vaccines before you leave. There's none of that there.

Host: Been there.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Thinking about not just with

Host: Just with vaccines. want to make sure I prepare for travel. Yes.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Thinking about with my friends who are working in like, the northern part of North America where you could have grizzly bears or polar bears and you need to be, you know, ready for like an uncon reside animal. None of that there. You know, no big flood, no typoon, nothing like that.

 With that said, the logistic is still very heavy. So it's mostly like the remoteness make that we have to plan everything a lot in advance. And also like for working with students for instance, it's complicated. Because when I send someone, it has to be for a long time because there's just not enough, you know, you cannot just go there for a week.

So it needs to be someone I know will be okay being away for so long. That, the quality of the, the samples and the data collected will be, you know, good quality.

Host: Right, right, right. We someone trustworthy who mentally and physically can be far away for quite a period of time, if this makes perfect sense.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: It's just like a slower process because you need to find people who like, uh, either already have experience or like, typically, you know, you recruit, uh, like a PhD student and the first year you do some local field work and once you know they're comfortable with the animals, they're comfortable being in the field, then you can send them there.

The logistical aspects are definitely heavier than in other places, but, I would say like, yeah, it's still an extreme place. It's always very windy.

Host: Gotcha.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: And sometimes, we are far from any communication mean, sometimes we have to do a lot of hiking to reach the place we want to reach.

Host: I'm out. I was never in folks, but I'm certainly out because she said hiking.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Okay.

Host: Yeah, not me. Yes, That is correct. have solved it. You solved it. So you have these challenges, right? You, it's physically taxing. You have the wind, you have communication, you have all of these things, at the end of the day or when you're back here; what do you feel is the biggest reward? Like when you walk away at the end of each project or each trip, what says to you yes, and then I will be here again because this.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I think my proudest moment, it's kind of stupid, but like, so as I was saying, there is a population living there and over the years, I've been there, like five times now, and I'm going, so I'm actually leaving at the end of the week for my sixth time. So it's been like five years that I see people and yeah,

Michelle Moyal, DVM: Yeah,

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Just on time. and so I, started, you know, I mean like being attached to these people and so on. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the thing that made me very proud last year is so sad thing that happened last year is that we have a highly pathogenic Avian influenza, so bird flu.

Host: Yes.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: had reached the island. so if you.

Host: Bird flu reached the island.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, so it also, it went all the way to Antarctica. So now it's everywhere in the world except in Australia. So like, Australia and New Zealand. I haven't had it yet, but it's, also in Antarctica. So last year we had the first outbreaks. And because I have been working on infectious disease there for some years, I, worked with the government to try to, you know, set up the monitoring and also the response to the outbreaks.

So obviously it's really hard, like we cannot just like control the virus now that it's there, but we can try to do our best to limit the impact so we, you know, increase biosecurity and, uh, limit the disturbance of the animals and so on. Because the Falkland Island is like, it's a small community.

It's only like, a couple of thousand people and they communicate a lot with Facebook. All of the official announcements are on Facebook. And so the vets, the government vets posted a summary at the end of the season saying that it has impacted a lot of the wildlife, but that we learned a lot and it was entirely thanks to our research and that they would carry on, like, collaborating with us.

And I was like, oh, you know, it feels, because sometimes, you know, our research feels disconnected from the reality. Because we're like in our labs or in our like remote islands, and then we're not actually, we, we are like learning a lot, but like the steps between like learning something and developing an application can be a, a very big step.

And so one moment was like, oh, it's, it's nice to see that what we are doing, in the field is like directly, yeah directly helping, with the management of, an environmental crisis in that case.

Host: Wow. Is there, in your most recent research or even in the course of the career, is there something like you walked away from and you're like, whoa, that is the most interesting thing I have like ever encountered. Do you ever have a moment like that where you're just like, what? Or even, just even important in the grand scheme of like this disease or what you do, is there something, like a thing you walked away from and you're like, wow, this is, this is a big deal.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I don't know. I feel like this, this might have happened like several times, but now I'm lost with the, like, the stress of the, the recording? My brain is a bit like focused on, you know, the last few years. So one of the big thing that you, you kinda kind of touched on a bit earlier is, when we started working on bird flu, so it's called Highly Pathogenic avian influenza with the idea that it, so it's highly pathogenic, it's killing its host very efficiently. And it's been, you know, considered for a very long time that if an animal gets infected, it's going to die.

And so with our surveillance, so one of the thing we do in the field is that we try to not only look at the animals that are being infected and obviously dying. So like you mentioned for, the cholera and the rats, like they might not die. And so there might not be, like, no one might be looking at them because you're like, oh, they're fine. But actually when you look at the one that I find, you do find a lot of individuals that are infected. So what we did there is, we collected samples from a lot of different species of birds.

In total we have like close to 20 species that we've been sampling, and we do find very contrasted response to infection. So some species are just dying. Like if they get infected, they die. So that's the case for Albatrosses, for instance. So we think we lost.

Host: So albatross is super sensitive.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, so like we think we lost tens of thousands of them, the first year of the outbreak.

Host: That's heartbreaking.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Then you have other species where we had some individuals dying, so we knew they were affected, but we don't know if all of them are dying. So the way we look at it is we take blood samples and we look for antibodies against the virus. If don't find antibodies against the virus, so that's part of the immune response, and that tells so you produce only antibodies only after you've been exposed to the pathogen. So if you've never met one pathogen or if you've never been vaccinated against that pathogen, you, you won't have antibodies against it. But if you met it once or if you got vaccinated, then you will have antibodies for some time after you've encountered the vaccine or the pathogen.

We sampled a lot of, of the sputum and we found that, for instance,  some of them died, but we also found a few that had antibodies. So it's telling us that some of them are surviving and they might be developing some population immunity, like some of them are developing immunity.

They might survive and, and in the long term, maybe they won't be sensitive to the next outbreak because they have that immunity now. And then at the other side of the spectrum, we have scavenging species. So the birds that will feed on other, dead animals. Yeah. And so those ones, you can expect they're highly exposed to the virus because they're feeding on dead, like other birds that died from it.

But they're not dying that much themselves. And so we find that now almost all of them have antibodies. So we have this very like, contrasted way of responding to the infection. And I think like the very cool thing with that is the lesson we can learn. So we, if we want to understand why albatrosses are dying, we also need to sample, for instance, vultures. Because like maybe the vultures are the one moving it or maybe the vultures are going to tell us where the virus is because we can go on an island where we missed it because we were not here at the moment of the outbreak. But now if we sample a vulture from that island and we found antibodies, we can say, oh, the virus has been here.

 If you're interested in why one species is dying, you sample, all of the other.

Host: Yeah, you've got me. That is interesting, right? Why are albatrosses dying? You don't expect to someone say, well, I think we should look at vultures. Right? That, that's like, that's just science people.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah.

Host: That's great.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Unfortunately the why they are like, some are dying and some are not. We don't know yet. But that's what we are working on, in the next step of our research is trying to understand if it's something due to the genetic or the microbiome or like the immunity.

You know, as you mentioned, some questions ago is like part of the like, so now I'm working with like immunologists and geneticists and so on, to understand can find, yeah, if we can find the answer to that question and then maybe use it for, if we do want to vaccinate some birds, like which one should we vaccinate?

Or if we want to develop any other mitigation measure, like inform it based on where it could be the most efficient.

Host: Think, you know, we obviously, we were talking about it a lot for a while, like highly pathogenic avian influenza and you know, as the news cycle comes, different things arise, but this is still a very, very prevalent issue and I'm, I'm glad you're researching it. Is that what you're most excited about?

Just trying to figure out that answer. Is there something right now that you're just, you are really excited about trying to tackle or try to find?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I think like the general idea of like trying to understand why some species or some population are responding so differently to the same pathogen and what does it mean as their role in the dynamic of the pathogen is, super interesting to me also, because as I mentioned, it's a way to

then inform how we going to potentially control this pathogen. For okay, if we say, okay, now we know that vultures are the ones spreading it, it's fictional. We don't know that. But right. We are not blaming vultures, vulture lovers everywhere. I promise.

Yeah, vultures are, they're cleaning carcasses and carcass removal seems to be an efficient way to control the pathogen, so they're helping with that.

But if we do find that, then, you know, they, they remove the carcasses from the environment, but then they fly somewhere else and they might move the pathogen, then it means, you know, instead of trying to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of albatrosses and penguins, maybe you can just vaccinate the small population of vultures we have there.

It's like, it's only a few thousand instead of like tens and hundreds of thousand. So there could be like a more efficient way and then it gets too science fiction, but like, because they forage, the, so forage, they look for food on land while the penguin and albatrosses are looking for food at sea.

So you cannot, you know, like sometimes you hear about like, oh, for rabies we do control rabies in the US by giving, oral vaccines with baits. So we can't do that with albatrosses because like we need to go put a fish at sea. You don't know where to go at sea.It's too complicated.

Host: Yeah, that sounds a little difficult even for

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, but, with vultures, if you make something that looks like a dead bird and it's full of vaccine, maybe that could work. So I was saying it's science fiction because we don't have an oral yet available, and we don't have, we are not sure that we can develop a vaccine that is actually stopping transmission.

We know we have vaccine that can stop symptoms, but we're not sure about transmission yet. So there are still a lot of steps that other people should work on because I'm not doing vaccine developments. It's too much. Yeah. It's too much, bench work for me,

guys in the audience, you can do that.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: right.

right. Listeners. Right. Exactly. I

love that she's plugging that listeners in the future, if you want to do vaccine science, she's got spots for you. You know? Right.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah.

Host: do that part and then she could do this

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah.

Host: I love that.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So yeah, I think like, really understanding who is doing what for the pathogen can help us understand where we should act to then stop this pathogens instead of like panicking and either like vaccinating everything, but then you lost a, you lose a lot of resources or,

Michelle Moyal, DVM: This is a great example of where science is like, listen, we're trying to be efficient.

We don't want to just like blindly, give injections to all these different animals. It's very costly, so we want to really focus on being efficient and vaccinate the population where we'll have the most impact, which I find very interesting. Sometimes science says you do have to vaccinate the whole population, and here science has told you, hopefully you can focus on one. So I think that's why research is incredibly important and I'm really excited to talk to someone like you that that does this research.

So thank you for that.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. And also I think that the idea of like, sometimes we feel like, oh, we have a vaccine, so the problem is solved, but it's actually not that easy because like. Once we have the vaccine, deploying the vaccine in a way that is efficient. So for instance, you think about like rabies, we've had a vaccine against, rabies forever, for a very long time, for a very long time.

It's still a, a struggle, like a, a huge burden on, on humanity. Like we're still losing a lot of people, to a disease for which we do have a vaccine. So just to say like, vaccines are a great tool, but having the vaccine is really just the first step. Then you need to understand what is the most efficient way to, to deploy it.

Host: I love my listeners getting to know your research, but I also want them to understand that, researchers are human and they do human things, and they're not just doing research every single second of every single day. So, now, I just need to know this. This is not even on my written questions. People, is there a restaurant on those islands that you're like, I go there every time? Or is there like, what are we dealing with here? How, how remote. What's happening?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, there is a little towncalled Stanley where there are few restaurants. So, there's a bunch of them. I go to different ones. I don't know. Every year I do my little tour. I go to the restaurants. There is one I haven't tried yet. It's on my list for this year. I'm like, I should definitely try. It's a wine bar

Host: Oh,

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: past, so I want to try this one.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: Do they have a specialty at these restaurants that you're like, this is the food that this, place is known for?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So one of the thing the Falklands has, a lot of mutton meat, so they do have a lot of sheep farming and so they have a very, very good mutton meat. So I'm, French as you got from the introduction and from my accent maybe.

In France we do.

just kidding. I'm just kidding, guys. We do eat a lot of lamb, but I always found that mutton was too strong on the, of the taste. But like the mutton from the Falklands for whatever reason, I don't know if it's because they're happy sheep roaming by the

Host: a life where walking around there.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah.

Host: They're breathing sea air. Yeah.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: And so they're like delicious.

Host: What low stress mutton isher favorite. I'm, that's, a very reasonable answer.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: And what I really like is that I can, when I go on islands where I work with farmers on their island, I get to, buy them a chop of der

Michelle Moyal, DVM: Yeah. What. I love that I'm having this conversation and I'm a vegetarian and I'm like, yes, like low stress, mutton meat,

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So I'm not vegetarian, so I'm not coming from that side, but I also like, because like, you know, it's like the family size production. so

Host: yes.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I, avoid, industrial production.

Host: I appreciate that.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. Obviously I'm not saying it comes with no undue impact because it's small. It still has, there are still some impacts of just having species that were originally not on the island, that are now on the island. But I still feel like, I know the animal welfare standards are on top of it.

Host: And for, you,

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: yeah.

Host: You feel like good about what you're eating. Yeah. This is no, no judgment on meat eaters, people. I just happened to say that I'm a vegetarian. What do you do when you are not working as a researcher, when you're not a scientist in

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So you were asking for restaurants, but I think eating is probably my biggest activity.

Host: Winner, winner, winner.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we do converge on that, for food. So I've been in Ithaca only for a little bit less than two years now. So I'm still, in the like exploratory phase, I'm like doing all the wineries and cideries and trying the different restaurants in, in it again around. I do have a good beer and I have developed, a taste for American beer that I didn't know before moving to the US. So I do, you know, I'm one of those people who do like an IPA,

Host: Ha, have you been to, Salt Point Brewing yet?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I have been. Yeah, and yeah, I like it. Yeah. So it's, it relates to the fact that also there's, in the Falkland Islands, there is one brewery and one gin distillery. And so they have delicious, locally brewed beers and distilled gin. So, yeah. So it's part of my activities. Even when I'm there, it's like my foodie moment

consuming local, local goods, butter

Michelle Moyal, DVM: what is.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: beer and gin.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: You heard it here. After they're done. After everybody's done researching and when we're done with the day at the vet hospital, we need a drink. Just maybe just saying,

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Especially when you

be

Michelle Moyal, DVM: that's okay.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: In the wind all day.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: Right, right. She's like, there wind blown, like, I need a beer. I come in at the end of the day and I'm like, someone hand me a cookie and that's okay. Sugar is my crutch. And so do you have any hobbies other than delicious dining?

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: I think just like exploring the area. So because my, like, you know.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: If she says hiking again, I'm out.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. No. So not necessarily even hiking, just walking? No. But like, or like, visiting new towns around and so on. So I haven't been very good at committing to hobbies joining a club where like if you don't show up to the training, it's annoying everyone.

Or like learning, like to play an instrument where if you like, don't practice for two months, then you lose everything.

Michelle Moyal, DVM: They know. Yeah.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: So I'm moving a lot. So my year at the moment is usually like from January to June, I'm in the US like in Ithaca because I'm teaching. But then in summer I usually go back home a little bit and then I come back for a few months and then I usually spend three months in the field.

So I just like, it's really hard to like commit to activities that require commitment. But also because like over the last, I don't know, 15 years, I've never lived more than three years in one given place. I'm in that constant tourist mood. I'm like constantly a tourist everywhere I go. So I'm just like really enjoying, like visiting, getting to know the places in which I am living and yeah.

Host: I want to be mindful of your time, but I'm going to ask you a final question based on this, because I think it might be important for people listening. How do you feel while you're traveling? Because you're doing these good things for the planet and for animals, and you're traveling for large stints.

How do you manage your friends, your family? If there's a partner, how do you manage that? Or even mentally and being in this different mode.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, I think, I've become more social than I was when I was a kid, so I think I make friends more easily now. And it's like, you know, sort of like that freedom of knowing, like, okay, you're coming somewhere and you might never see these people again. So like you, you can just be yourself. Yeah. Enter that, that when you are just yourself and you don't care, it's actually easier to connect with people than when you're like very focused on how you may show up and so on. Yeah. Yeah. And also, so I think it's you see there's a lot of people that I've gained and then lost in my life because like, we just it's been a long time.

Yeah. You know, just being at peace with that, people are like, they, it's not something you acquire and keep forever. They can be part of your life. And then I do have like some very long term like friendships and so on that I've been like, you know, they've survived all those years of me traveling. So now I'm like, I'm very confident in the fact that they're going to survive forever because yeah. Like they survived so far, it's going to stay. I think it helps most of my friends in France are still living in the same area, so they're still like very connected to each other.

So when I come, I can see all of them and also like, it's like a group to which I'm like, I'm so, I'm part of the group, but like, can I. In and out, like physically, so it's like when I go back, I know this group is still here. I can just find them. My friends and friends are like childhood friends.

And I know like, I got lucky to meet them early in my life. And sometimes people meet their life time friends later in life. So I think it's like, be yourself and I guess, my mother was also traveling a lot when she was young, so I think she, you know, she's never been angry at me for like, being away so much.

Host: Yeah, that's a big deal. I mean, more than you know, because family loves you and I know they want you to be around, but you're off trying to do these things for you and for the planet, so that

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah. Yeah. I enjoy the diversity in my life, like in my job and in my life. So like, you know, I'm not like in front of my computer all day, every day. I get like moments where I'm away and, people I meet now they know it's part of my life. So they kind of deal with it. And if they don't then it was nice meeting them, but yeah.

Host: Yeah. That's so what I hope people take away from that is I really love hearing that you know who you are right now. You're open to meeting new people. When you've met your people, your people remain, your people and some will not stay in your life forever. Life lessons, right? This is scientist. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Thank you. Because again, it's really important for me that people understand that, they have to make decisions for themselves and they have to take care of their physical health and their mental health and still get to do what they love and still get to be with the people they love. So thank you for that.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: Yeah, no worries. Happy. I don't know, know it's not a life for everyone, but like for some people it is and it's great. And I, yeah, and I also like, I feel home in the Falklands space because I also like my little routine there because I have my friends I see every year, and so it's also part of the chaos is actually having routines everywhere.

Host: Yeah, and it's interesting that you said that, much like the penguins who love routine, we've learned that here, people listening. So even though it may sound like your life is not a routine, everywhere you go has a routine. And for some, that's nice.

Amandine Gamble, PhD, DVM, MSc: And it's like, yeah, and it's actually, I, I go the same place every year, so it's.

Host: love that. but that's enough for some people, right? So like, maybe just enough. So the moral of the story is there is something out there for everyone in veterinary medicine, in science. And again, you can make it what you want it to be. And you could do amazing things for the, for the earth and for our animals. Dr. Gamble, I am so thankful I had the opportunity to talk to you. It has been lovely getting to know you and getting to know the type of research you're doing and what you're doing for seabirds. We now all know what sub Antarctic means, right? Yes. That's how she referred to her notes quickly. We know all of these cool things we know about mutton, which I'm going to take with me as a fun fact, on the islands you're spending time on. And so again, I really appreciate you spending the time with us. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening to the Cornell Veterinary Podcast. I don't know how many of them are there, but whoever's listening, thanks for that. Keep listening and subscribe. Maybe give us a like on your favorite platform, and we will talk to you all soon.