Oonagh Barker
@obarker.bsky.social
Final year PhD student at UEA - I use dietary manipulations in fruit flies to explore sex differences in ageing, parental effects, and responses to heat shock. Interested in postdocs for autumn 2026!
New preprint! We looked at age-specific preferences for protein and carbohydrate in males and females, where females lay their eggs vs what larvae choose& do best on, & found unexpected parental age effects. With @eivimeycook.bsky.social @alexeimaklakov.bsky.social Wilfried Haerty& Tracey Chapman
EcoEvoRxiv@ecoevorxiv.bsky.social · 5d agoAge-related shifts in dietary and oviposition preferences and steep costs of modest parental ageing in Drosophila melanogaster doi.org/10.32942/X26...
I did a thing :D First chapter of my PhD out now! 🌱 (first paper ever 🥳) Traits are historically hypothesized to age synchronously, but it is no longer the case. We quantified asynchronous ageing in Seychelles warblers and reviewed potential reasons for why this may be.
Evolution Letters@evolletters.bsky.social · last wk.Do all traits age together? A long-term study of wild Seychelles warblers shows ageing is surprisingly asynchronous, with some traits senescing while others remain unchanged. doi.org/10.1093/evle...
Do all traits age together? A long-term study of wild Seychelles warblers shows ageing is surprisingly asynchronous, with some traits senescing while others remain unchanged. doi.org/10.1093/evle...
🌟🌟 Postdoc position in Disease Ecology & Nature-Based Solutions 🌟🌟 We are looking for a creative and highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to join the UKRI @netpositivecentre.bsky.social and the @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful Cornwall, UK. careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/11... 🦠🌳🏙️🌍🗺️🐝 🦌🕷️
Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow in Cornwall | University of Exeter
View details and apply for this Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow vacancy in Cornwall. Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow This UKRI funded full-time post is available from 01/1...
careers.exeter.ac.uk
Latest paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Dietary restriction is evolutionary conserved on the phenotypic and mechanistic level - EMBO Reports
The anti-ageing response to Dietary Restriction (DR) is thought to be mechanistically ancient, reasoning from its phenotypic conservation. However, DR is implemented differently across species and evi...
link.springer.com
This made my day, such a lovely print! Thanks @royalsocietypublishing.org
Royal Society Publishing@royalsocietypublishing.org · last mo.Congratulations to Oonagh Barker for winning the beautiful Royal Society Publishing print prize at #ExE2026! Thanks to everyone who visited the @royalsocietypublishing.org table and entered the draw.
#ExE2026 Excellent time at the poster session yesterday presenting this work on diet x heat stress from my visit to @amandabretman.bsky.social 's lab in Leeds last year. Had some great conversations!
A few more days until the start of #ExE2026, the new evolutionary ecology 🧬✖️🌳 conference hosted @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall: 230 participants, 25 countries, 3 plenaries, 10 keynotes, 70 talks and over 100 posters. Also excursions, workshops, dinner, great swag and sea shanties 🎶 🤩 evoxeco.uk
Erik Postma@erikpostma.bsky.social · 6mo agoInterested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!
Are you an early career researcher who want to visit another lab to collaborate on a project on internal conflicts? Apply for our ECR Research Visit Grant! Deadline is April 30.
New in Nature: We mapped the genetics of aging across the entire lifespan of 6,438 mice. 59 loci, modulate the genetics of *when* you die, not just whether a gene associates with lifespan. #Longevity #Aging #Genetics #Healthspan www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dynamics of genetic and somatic trade-offs in ageing and mortality - Nature
Mapping DNA variants that modulate mortality using a starting population of 6,438 young mice defined 29 distinct loci that influence lifespan and mortality with divergent age-...
nature.com
Ironically, @universitypress.cambridge.org has long recommended a book known as “Butcher’s” as a guide to CUP house style! Here’s a screenshot of the author's LinkedIn post taken by an understandably disgruntled copyeditor:
Parental age at reproduction accelerates offspring pace of life in Gryllus bimaculatus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.14.718189v1
Excellent paper with very clear and important results - selection on relative egg size (maternal investement) reduces lifespan and accelerates ageing in females.
Barbara Tschirren@btschirren.bsky.social · 4mo agoNew paper out: Artificial selection for increased reproductive effort accelerates actuarial senescence and reduces lifespan in a precocial bird url: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... @uniexecec.bsky.social @erikpostma.bsky.social @joelpick.bsky.social y.social @oscarvedder.bsky.social
@ewanharney.bsky.social & @gonzalezlabbcn.bsky.social show evidence of transgenerational developmental plasticity as a result of heat shock in fruit flies, documenting gene expression and phenotype changes 3+ generations following heat shock. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag069 #evobio #molbio
Shared some findings from recent work at UEA CEEC today! Great to see what other researchers from BIO and ENV have been working on.
UEA CEEC@ueaceec.bsky.social · 5mo agoNow speaking 👇 🌡️🪰 Heat stress and fertility Oonagh Barker explores how early-life diet shapes reproductive success after heat exposure in Drosophila. @obarker.bsky.social #CEECRebellion2026
In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. Learn more on #NationalWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4mM2aS9
First time I've dropped a tray, am I right in feeling like this is a milestone in a Drosophila-based PhD? Incredible luck in that this is the best possible time this could have happened, and least important tray it could have happened to, in this 4-months-and-counting long experiment!
New substack, on @trevorcousins.bsky.social and @aylwyn-scally.bsky.social's brilliant new paper on the origin of Homo sapiens. arutherford.substack.com/p/human-evol...
Human evolution: a one-million-year clusterf**k
A new incredibly subtle and elegant analysis of our living genomes reveals yet another major piece in the jigsaw of human evolution, completely hidden until now.
arutherford.substack.com
Hurray! Some good news for bees at last. Our new government has followed the science, and refused the application by sugar beet farmers to use banned neonicotinoid pesticides.
Just making sure that everyone is aware of this crab that NOAA scientists found
The wholesale extermination of predators on grouse moors needs to stop. Please consider signing this petition in order to speed things up. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...
Petition: Ban driven grouse shooting
Chris Packham, Ruth Tingay and Mark Avery (Wild Justice) believe that driven grouse shooting is bad for people, the environment and wildlife. People; we think grouse shooting is economically insignifi...
petition.parliament.uk
I love this article partly because it details how this little fly has been vital for all sorts of research, including for human health. But I really love the part about where fruit flies originated and how they’ve conquered the world. 🍓🍒🍷🪰 🧪 🪲 🪳 phys.org/news/2025-01...
'One of the most important species for science': How the humble fruit fly transformed four fields of research
The common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), more correctly called the vinegar fly, is a frequent visitor to ripe fruit in households around the world, where it often deposits eggs on rotting flesh...
phys.org
Ok people. I’m drawing silhouettes this afternoon. If you have a paper coming up and you are in need of a #silhouette please let me know and I will have it ready today. As always I upload all my silhouettes to phylopic.org I also have tutorials on how to put a silhouette in a plot in R.
PhyloPic
PhyloPic is an open database of free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for reuse under Creative Commons licenses. Download silhouettes for use in educational materi...
phylopic.org
Hello Bluesky, We're so excited to be launching our first post for EMPSEB30! 🎉🤩 We've got lots of news to share! We've found an amazing venue and some fantastic plenary speakers, and we're on the lookout for sponsors! Visit empseb30.mpipz.mpg.de to dive in! #EMPSEB30 #Students #Conference
Delighted to have had a small part in this very cool paper - my undergraduate final project contributed to the dataset. And big congrats to Rob and the others on the outcome! 🎉
Rob Barber@ra-barber.bsky.social · 2y agoBig news! 🎉 My first PhD chapter has been published in @PLOSBiology, and it just made the cover! 🐦🌍 Perfect time to dive into the key findings from our global study on sexual selection in birds. 🧵👇 📖 Read the paper: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Predictive text being helpful as ever as I tried to decide on some keywords for my bio...
Hello Bluesky! I'm Oonagh, a penultimate year PhD student working on life history responses to nutrition in Drosophila. Interested in sexual selection, lifespan, ageing, evolutionary ecology - lots. Looking forward to making connections on a less unhinged platform.
