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Oonagh Barker

@obarker.bsky.social
645 followers 535 following 14 posts

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 opportunities for autumn 2026!

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Reposted by Oonagh Barker
Corrie Moreau @corriemoreau.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
📣 📣 📣 UPDATE: The 2026-2027 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resource! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
docs.google.com
ecoevojobs.net 2026-27
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
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
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Claire Tsui @clairetsui.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
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.
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Dr Neil & Mr Price @drneil.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
It’s really starting to grind me down
The Barney/Moe’s Tavern meme

“Default AI features” Barney being kicked out
“Finding how to turn it all off in the settings” -satisfied Moe

Third panel Barney coming in behind “software update”
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Evolution Letters @evolletters.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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...
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Barbara Tschirren @btschirren.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
🌟🌟 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... 🦠🌳🏙️🌍🗺️🐝 🦌🕷️
careers.exeter.ac.uk
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...
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Mirre Simons @mirresimons.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Latest paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
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...
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
This made my day, such a lovely print! Thanks @royalsocietypublishing.org
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
#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!
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Erik Postma @erikpostma.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
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
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Jack Ashby @jackdashby.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
I know it can upset a lot of people to think of the downsides of owning outdoor #cats, but I really appreciate a museum display showing just how many wild birds domestic cats kill (although this display in #Hamburg focuses on data from Australia, USA and New Zealand rather than Germany or Europe)
A display with a taxidermy cat surrounded by dead birds
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Arvid Ågren @arvidagren.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
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.
We are happy to announce that the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN has funding available to support several small travel grants for early-career researchers to enable them to visit another laboratory.
What is this for?
This funding is intended to enable early-career researchers – PhD students, postdocs, and junior research fellows – to visit another laboratory. In so doing, they can learn a new method or approach and/or initiate novel collaborations in the form of manuscripts, grants, or fellowship proposals. We envision that these visits are short stays (a week up to a month) but longer stays are also permitted.
Who can apply?
Early-career researchers, i.e. PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and up to junior research fellows (i.e., those in tenure-track positions but not tenured yet). Priority will be given to ESEB members and to trips that reflect novel collaborations (i.e., between people who have not previously collaborated, defined by co-authorship). ESEB membership is cheap (€40 annually, €20 for students) and discounts are available for residents of low to upper-middle economy countries (see ESEB website for details). Membership also comes with additional benefits such as reduced fees for conference attendance.
What can be requested?
Applicants can request funding to support a short research visit at another institution. The maximum amount of support that can be requested is €1.000, to be used for travel and accommodation. The provided funding cannot be used to cover research costs, wages, and/or stipends. ESEB policy states that we should minimize the environmental impact of e.g. travel; therefore, we will only support travel by airplane if the distance travelled exceeds 500 km and the travel time with alternative forms of transport would be more than 6 hours.

How to apply:
Download the application form and fill it out.
Obtain two short letters of support, one from your supervisor/line manager and one from the host research group explai…
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Danny Arends @dannyarends.nl · 22/04/2026
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...
nature.com
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-...
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 15/04/2026
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:
LinkedIn post by Alexander Martin Mussgnug:

My recent publication has several AI hallucinations. Including my own name (which is not "Anna Maria Mussgnug")
And no, this was not because I was carelessly using AI.
The paper went through copyediting at the publisher (Cambridge University Press). I had submitted my references with first names abbreviated (Mussgnug, A. M.). CUP house style asks for first names spelled out. It looks like, somewhere in copyediting, an LLM was used to expand them without sanity-checking the outputs. So "Alexander Martin" because "Anna Maria", "Moritz" became "Michael", and so on. None of these changes were clearly flagged in the proofs sent to me, so I did not catch them.
The irony is not subtle, given the topic of my paper. The paper argues that we too easily throw overboard established norms and best-practices when we turn to new and flashy AI applications. And this is exactly what happened: a tool dropped into a workflow without the verification practices that have governed copyediting for decades.
I work on critical AI studies and the philosophy of science, so I've been pondering this over the past weeks. There's a growing literature on AI in peer review, but copyediting is also part of the publication pipeline, and so far I haven't come across critical scholarship on the (apparently rather careless) use of AI at this step. It seems worth doing. My case is not the only one, many of my colleagues have recently had similar experiences.
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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Parental age at reproduction accelerates offspring pace of life in Gryllus bimaculatus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Alexei Maklakov @alexeimaklakov.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Excellent paper with very clear and important results - selection on relative egg size (maternal investement) reduces lifespan and accelerates ageing in females.
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Molecular Biology and Evolution @molbioevol.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
@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
MBE | Transgenerational effects of heat shock on gene regulation and fitness-related traits in natural Drosophila populations
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Shared some findings from recent work at UEA CEEC today! Great to see what other researchers from BIO and ENV have been working on.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 04/09/2025
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: scim.ag/4mM2aS9
Austrospirachtha carrijoi, a species of rove beetle, with text that says: Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food.
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Thanks @amandabretman.bsky.social !
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
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!
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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
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...
arutherford.substack.com
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.
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Dave Goulson @davegoulson.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
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.
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
Just making sure that everyone is aware of this crab that NOAA scientists found
Photo of a small crab from NOAA’s social media. It’s covered in spikes
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Henry Morris @mrhenrymorris.substack.com · 16/01/2025
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.parliament.uk
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...
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Dezene Huber 🍁 🌻 @dezene.me · 04/01/2025
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...
phys.org
'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...
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Gabby Palomo, PhD @gabspalomo.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
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.org
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...
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EMPSEB 31 @empseb.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
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
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
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! 🎉
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Predictive text being helpful as ever as I tried to decide on some keywords for my bio...
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Oonagh Barker @obarker.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
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.
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Joseph Tobias @josephtobias.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
My first 🦋 thread - a bit of science stuff for new followers. 👋 Friday night release by PLoS Biology. Not ideal but some weekend reading for fans of sexual selection journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... 1/9
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