Biography

Marie graduated from the French Veterinary School of Toulouse in 2015. She has always been passionate by birds; at the vet school she became interested in welfare and physiology of birds in their housing environment. She worked on respiratory physiology and thermoregulation of the duck during force-feeding for her veterinary thesis. Then, she worked as a vet practitioner in a veterinary office specialized in poultry farming. Her time spent in the poultry sector gave her the opportunity to better assess the issues of the different poultry productions and provide the best advices in term of management and treatment by using conventional medicine as well as homeopathy or phytotherapy. Back to the veterinarian school of Toulouse for research projects at the beginning of 2017, she now focuses on her PhD concerning healthcare of backyard poultry and its epidemiology regarding poultry commercial farms.

Research

Marie’s research activity is conducted in the joint research unit (UMR) INRA-ENVT IHAP: it focuses on the study of pathogen communities such as viruses or bacteria present in the respiratory and digestive spheres of poultry from commercial and non-commercial farms. Her activity is particularly devoted to the study of specific markers present in backyards and leisure or ornamental livestock. The objective is to better understand the practices in a “leisure sector” that is currently unknown and in recent evolution, as well as to understand the possible risks of contamination between commercial and non-commercial compartments. The detection of these markers and risk assessment are based on biomolecular, microbiological and epidemiological approaches.

Selected publications

Marie Souvestre, Claire Guinat, Eric Niqueux, Luc Robertet, Guillaume Croville, Mathilde Paul, Audrey Schmitz, Anne Bronner, Nicolas Eterradossi, Jean-Luc Guérin. Role of Backyard Flocks in Transmission Dynamics of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N8) Clade 2.3.4.4, France, 2016–2017. Emerging Infectious Diseases. March 2019.