Lunch & Learn Series: Immunogenics of Gyrfalcons and Peregrine Falcons

For the Hawk Migration Association’s (HMA’s) October 2025 Lunch & Learn, we welcomed Sage Dale, Boise State Master’s student, who spoke about her Gyrfalcon and Peregrine Falcon research. Low pathogen abundance throughout the Arctic has been advantageous for nesting birds to avoid diseases found at lower latitudes, but may have limited selective pressures to develop genomic mechanisms of immune defense. The poleward shift of vectors of diseases has increased opportunities for novel pathogen exposure to high latitude communities. There is a need to understand the genomic mechanisms of immunologically naive Arctic wildlife. Here, we leverage high-quality genomes and a comparative genomic approach to characterize the innate immune genes of an essential protein of the vertebrate immune system, toll-like receptors (TLRs), between a specialized Arctic raptor with suspected low immune competence (Gyrfalcon, Falco rusticolus) and its globally distributed congener (Peregrine Falcon, Falco peregrinus). We hypothesize that TLRs will be closely related between falcon species, with Gyrfalcon showing lower TLR diversity.

Sage Dale is a Master’s or Raptor Biology student in the Conservation Genetics Lab at Boise State University. She’s interested in Arctic ecosystem biodiversity and using molecular and computational techniques to enhance traditional ecological methods for studying birds on these landscapes.