FORMER Royal Wootton Bassett student Sophie Watson is doing her bit to save animals in the Arctic from the effects of global warming by examining their parasites.

The 30-year-old, who is currently working on her PhD at Cardiff University, is studying polar bears and wolverines - or more accurately, their microscopic lodgers.

“There’s this whole unknown and hidden world inside these animals – inside all of us – and it can tell us so much,” she said. “The gut is a mini-ecosystem of its own and the bacteria and parasites living here are fundamental to the health - both good and bad - of these animals. They can give us so much insight into their lives and the world around us. They’re so important and yet there’s so much we don’t yet know about these micro-environments.

“It might sound very strange – but I think it’s awesome.”

Sophie’s interest in wildlife grew when she went on walks with her botanist uncle and on family holidays in Wales.

“I hadn’t realised until later in life that I could do things like that as a career. When I went to college, my next door neighbour was training to be a careers councillor and she needed a guinea pig and she asked me. After some sessions she suggested what I’m doing now as a career path and I’ve never looked back.”

Her previous research showed differences in the gut bacteria of polar bears that remained out on the sea ice, compared to those that came ashore because of their rapidly vanishing habitat.

“In this study, we investigated the parasites of wolverines from Nunavut, a region high in the Canadian Arctic. We detected a variety of different parasites, including Baylisascaris devosi, a type of roundworm, and Taenia twitchelli, a tapeworm, both of which haven’t been recorded in wolverines since 1978.

“Our research extended the geographic distribution of these parasites in wolverines by 2,000km to the east and into the tundra ecosystem – the more inhospitable and barren landscapes of the Arctic.

“The diversity of parasite species we found may reflect the huge distances wolverines can travel and gives insight into the diverse range of prey items they consume.

She added: “Monitoring wildlife, particularly in such extreme environments, plays an important role in identifying changes that will hopefully help us to come up with actions that might slow or minimise any impact. This is particularly important in areas like the Arctic where rates of climate change are so fast.”