Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Aug 22

And to round off the Sheepie presence at @eseb2025.bsky.social we had a full house for Lizy giving a talk on the missing fraction problem! Thanks for having us Barcelona!

7

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Aug 19

📜🐏Sheepies at @eseb2025.bsky.social! Some of our PhD students are presenting their work in tonight’s poster session. Check them out here: @barnardlucy.bsky.social on epigenetics #8, @lizziedrake.bsky.social and sex specific senescence #10, and @elliswiersma.bsky.social with breeding phenology #350

2 3

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Aug 6

🔭🐑 Our summer field team have been busy beavering away and have completed their 10 censuses of the village bay population (picured). Over ten days a team of three will go out and count all the sheep in this area, tagged and untagged, so we know who is where and who they are grouping with.

2 9

Reposted by Soay Sheep Project

Discovery Immunology @discovimmunol.bsky.social · Jul 10

T-helper cell responses in wild Soay sheep are repeatable, positively correlated, and linked to resistance against helminths and coccidia, challenging assumptions about Th1/Th2 trade-offs in natural settings.

📖 Read more: https://bit.ly/3GCm0PN

#VeterinaryImmunology

1 4 9

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Jul 9

💻🐑 Update! Back on the mainland our team at @sheffielduni.bsky.social have been beavering away and have finished extracting DNA and aligning over 1000 whole sheep genomes as part of an exciting new project. Keep an eye out for more as the work progresses.

A blue test tube rack filled with numbered tubes. Next to it is a pipette and papers.

1 5

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Jun 24

🔭🐑 Check it out! With the lambing team back on the mainland have a look at the stats for the arrival of the Echo Orange cohort of 2025!

2 5

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Jun 13

.....and follow along with some of the authors here @erinsiracusa.bsky.social @delphinedemoor.bsky.social @gfalbery.bsky.social @elliswiersma.bsky.social @mattjsilk.bsky.social

Bluesky

iracusa.bsky.social

1

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Jun 13

🖨️🐑 Sneak Peak! A new sheepie pre-print is up on BioRXiv on the Environment dependent benefits of sociality in Soay Sheep. Check it out here doi.org/10.1101/2025... (1/2)

Environment dependent benefits of sociality in Soay sheep

An individual’s social connections have strong effects on fitness. Despite this, there is pronounced among-individual variation in social behaviour. This variation may be maintained if different types...

doi.org

1 3 8

Reposted by Soay Sheep Project

St Kilda World Heritage Site NTS @stkildawhs.bsky.social · May 28

I wonder what way the wind is blowing today ?💨
#sheep #soaysheep

7 47

Reposted by Soay Sheep Project

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · Apr 29

For the feral #sheep on the remote St Kilda islands of #Scotland, long-term success hinges on the first year of life, especially for males. Here are the interesting reasons why: www.pnas.org/post/journal...

#ecology #EvolutionaryEcology #SexualDimorphism #SexualSelection

4 8

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Apr 15

🔭🐑 The first lambs have arrived, and spot on time from consort sightings in November! Soon village bay will be full of skipping lambs and frantic field workers....🏃‍♀️‍➡️

3 32

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Apr 15

📰🐑 They found that early-life adversities, eg reduced food resources, harsh winters and low birth weight, can reduce a sheep's ability to reproduce successfully and disadvantaged males in particular. Read a summary by @pnas.org here: www.pnas.org/post/journal...

In sheep, long-term success hinges on the first year of life—especially for males

To track lasting impacts in the animals, ecologists investigated weather, parasite load, birth weight and other early-life factors. Image credit: Martin Stoffel.

www.pnas.org

3

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Apr 15

📰🐑New Paper! PhD researcher @lizziedrake.bsky.social and collaborators looked at how harsh environments in a Soay's first year can have lasting impacts on reproduction and lifespan, and how they differ for males and females.
Read it here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

1 1 6

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Apr 7

🔭🐑 Saturday saw a big milestone for our field team who completed their 10th and final census of the trip and were rewarded with some glorious weather! Bring on the Lambs...

1 18

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Mar 24

🔭🐑 Our lambing field season is underway! Last week our lambing team arrived and started out on their first big job of the trip, study area censusing. They will try and spot as many sheep as they can across 10 censuses over the next couple of weeks

9

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Mar 20

📰🐑 We're on the cover! If you haven't already seen it, check out a piece about how our long term field research helps studying ageing in the wild.

Nature Aging @nataging.nature.com · Mar 20

🗞️Our March issue is live!📷This month we're featuring work on sarcopenia, senescence, cognitive resilience, the effects of body temperature on healthspan and much more… Read it all here: nature.com/nataging/vol...

2 8

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Mar 12

Each year’s lambs get a new colour on a six year cycle, prefixed with a letter. Last year’s lambs were Yellow, starting off our “echo” series. Any sheep caught where we don’t know there age are given “unknown purple” tags. 🔭🐑

6

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Mar 12

The combination of different horn shapes, colour morphs and sometimes white patches make every sheep unique to the keen eye. But when we are out censusing it’s much easier to tell them apart by their unique colour tag and number which can be spotted through the teloscope 🔭🐑

1 6

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Feb 28

Sheepie News! A perspective piece in @natureaging.bsky.social highlights the importance of long term research and how St Kilda Soay sheep project provides a powerful model for understanding why ageing process varies under complex environmental conditions.
Check it out: doi.org/10.1038/s435...
📰🐑

1 3

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Feb 28

Sheepie News! A new paper led by researchers at @moredunfoundation.bsky.social shows that immune responses are consistent over time and predict worm infection levels in Soay Sheep. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1093/disc...
📰🐑

T-helper cell phenotypes are repeatable, positively correlated, and associated with helminth infection in wild Soay sheep

AbstractBackground. T-helper (Th) cells co-ordinate immune responses to ensure that infections with diverse parasites are controlled effectively. Helminth

doi.org

2

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Feb 27

There are also different horns, with the rams, or as we call them Tups, sporting wonderful curls. Ewe horns are thinner and some don't have any at all, called polled. The third horn type is scurred where horns are misshapen, taking on a variety of trajectories and sizes.

2

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Feb 27

With the lambing season fast approaching, it's time to meet the sheep! Soay sheep come in four colour morphs or "flavours" indicating their body and belly colours: dark-wild, dark-self, light-wild, and light-self. The most common is the dark wild morph with a brown body and white belly.

1 5

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Jan 29

We've arrived! The Soay Sheep project now has Bluesky 🦋 Follow along for "bleats" about all things sheep related, from field work to research output and everything in between
🔭🐑

3 12

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Mar 24

Sheepies on the move! Tomorrow is our annual sheep meeting in Edinburgh bringing together researchers from across the country for all things Soay Sheep 💻🐑
.
#SoaySheepProject #research #ecology

Soay Sheep Project @soaysheep.bsky.social · Mar 24

Rut Team 2024! Xavier, Rebecca, and Lucy have (just about) finished a four week trip to do our autumn data collection: censusing, behaviour, and vegetation sampling, as well as setting up some extra wind loggers for the winter 🔭🐏
.
.
#fieldwork #stkilda #soaysheep #ecology