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
Dune shearwater which bred in lava fields. Extinction of the species occurred about 2000–3000 years ago, contemporaneously with the first human settlement of the islands by the Guanches, with the cause likely to be human predation. Dune shearwater The dune shearwater ("Puffinus holeae"), also known as the Canarian shearwater or Hole's shearwater, was a relatively large shearwater which bred in the Canary Islands archipelago of the North Atlantic Ocean. Fossils have also been found in the Figueira Brava cave archaeological site on the western coast of Portugal. The specific epithet honours Mrs Jean Hole who collected fossil material of the species on