Pat Nuttall laboratory reagent, a result that was published in "Nature" in 1977. She then worked with ornithologist Chris Perrins trying to identify the virus responsible for puffinosis, a disease that affects the Manx shearwater ("Puffinus puffinus") sea bird. During this research, Nuttall visited sea-bird colonies and became interested in ticks, arthropods that often infest sea birds as well as other vertebrates, and can act as vectors for disease. In the early 1980s, Nuttall started to study viruses transmitted by ticks, initially focusing on orbiviruses, nairoviruses and thogotoviruses. While performing experiments designed to explore whether "Thogoto virus", an influenza-like virus, can be
Wedge-tailed shearwater (in common with the other shearwaters) as an adaptation for swimming. This species is related to the pan-Pacific Buller's shearwater, which differs much in colour pattern, but also has a wedge tail and a thin black bill. They make up the "Thyellodroma" group, a superspecies of the large shearwaters that were for a long time included in the genus "Puffinus". Wedge-tailed shearwaters feed pelagically on fish, squid and crustaceans. Their diet is 66% fish, of which the most commonly taken is goatfish. It was thought that the species mostly took food from surface feeding, observations of feeding wedge-tails suggested that