# First person – Anabel Byars

## TL;DR

Anabel Byars discusses her research on how unpredictable disturbances affect fruit fly behavior and lifespan, and shares her journey from undergraduate research to pursuing a PhD in neuroscience.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel approach to examining the effects of unpredictable environmental disturbances on Drosophila behavior and longevity.

## Key findings

- Unpredictable disturbances significantly alter activity behavior in Drosophila melanogaster.
- Exposure to unpredictable disturbances impacts the lifespan of fruit flies.

## Abstract

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Anabel Byars is first author on ‘
Unpredictable disturbance and its effects on activity behavior and lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster’, published in BiO. Anabel conducted the research described in this article while an undergraduate research assistant in Dr Nicole Riddle's lab at the Department of Biology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), USA. She is now an incoming PhD student in graduate biomedical sciences (neuroscience theme) at UAB and will start her PhD program in July 2025, at which point she will complete several lab rotations before choosing a new lab and PI in the Department of Neurobiology at the same institution. Anabel has a range of research interests, including Alzheimer's disease, addiction, memory, nonpathological aging, and neuroplasticity.