The Walling Lab

About us

The Walling Lab is based at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology within the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

We are generally interested in the evolution of life history traits, such as lifespan and reproduction. We explore environmental and genetic variation in life history traits through use of a common lab species, such as fruit flies, and the fantastic Red Deer study on the Isle of Rum.

Currently work in the lab falls into two broad areas of research: 1) Understanding the evolution of the response to dietary restriction and 2) The causes and consequences of life history variation in natural populations. See the Projects Tab for more details of these and previous projects.

Work in the Walling Lab is currently funded by:

News

Eevi Passed Her Viva! Eevi successfully defended her thesis and is now Dr Savola! Huge congratulations to Eevi from all the Walling Lab.

New Honours Student! A new honours student has joined the lab. Jane will be exploring the generality of lifespan extension from macronutrient manipulation, through a meta-analysis.

New Paper! Eevi and Craig had a paper published in Evolution. The paper tests the evolutionary explanations for lifespan extension under dietary restriction using fruit flies. They show that lifespan extension under DR is not an artifact of the benign lab environment. The paper can be found here.

Josh and Craig gave talks! Josh and Craig gave pre-recorded talks at the British Ecological Society's Festival of Ecology meeting. Josh talked about how multiple environmental cues shape investment in lifehistory traits. Craig talked about the lab groups work testing the evolutionary basis of dietary restriction.

New Paper! Josh, Eevi and Craig had a review paper published in BioEssays, in collaboration with Dan Nussey and Jenny Regan. The review discribes the current evolutionary explanations for lifespan extension via dietary restriction and discuss how these could fit with a more macronutrient centred approach. The paper can be found here.

New Paper! Craig had a paper published in Evolution. The paper describes work on the genetic architecture of maternal effects across ontogeny in red deer. The full paper can be found here and more information on the excellent Rum red deer research can be found here.

New Paper! Eevi has published her work on BioRxiv! The paper describes a large experiment testing the evolutionary explanations for the lifespan benefit of DR. You can read the full paper here.

Josh Gave Another Talk! Josh gave a talk at the online Scottish Ecological Ageing Research Group meeting. He talked about the role of multiple environmental cues in shaping life-history responses.

Josh Gave A Talk! Josh gave a webinar at the University of Sheffield. He covered some of the work he has been doing with Paul funded by the Leverhulme Trust - see projects page for details.

Craig did a Viva! Craig acted as external examiner for Lucy Davies' Viva at Aarhus University. Congratulations to Dr Davies!

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