Overview
I did my BSc in Zoology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, graduating in 2010 and ranking First in my graduating class, with Distinction, First Class Honor. I re-joined the Department of Zoology in 2012 as a Demonstrator and started my MSc graduate work in Evolutionary Biology, which I finished in 2015.
My MSc thesis title was ‘’Intraspecific Variations among Egyptian Populations of the Red Fox Vulpes vulpes’’, studying the phylogeography and evolution of the red fox in the highly fragmented habitats across the present-day hyper-arid Sahara. My results strongly suggested that the evolution and extinction of pre-Nile river systems across Northeast Africa may have created dispersal corridors that allowed many species, including the red fox to spread across that region.
In 2018 I began a PhD at Cardiff University on the Phylogeography of the two closely related taxa, Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) and Ruppell's fox (Vulpes rueppellii).
Research
Research interests
My research interests include evolutionary biology, animal adaptation, conservation biology, and Bioinformatics. I am very interested in the phylogeography and phylogenetic of mammals, especially those in North Africa and the Middle East.
Thesis
Phylogeography and adaptation of the two sister species, Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and Ruppell's fox (Vulpes Rueppellii): Focusing on North Africa and the Middle East
My work focus on the relationship among and within isolated populations of the two species, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. Furthermore, I'm trying to test the role of the Pleistocene climatic fluctuations in the current distribution of these two foxes. Using a combination of morphometric analysis and the traditional genetic markers (e.g mtDNA, Y-chromosome) and high-throughput techniques (e.g RAD, WGS), an integrated approach will be created, hoping to highlight the possible genetic structuring and adaptation of these two foxes.
Funding source
Vice-Chancellor Scholarship (Cardiff University)
