Primary research interests

The toxin of the eastern paralysis tick; and the evolutionary genomics of parasitic arthropods

Research focus and collaborations

At present, At present, I study the eastern paralysis tick, Ixodes holocyclus, and envenomation of dogs, cats, humans and wildlife with a toxin from this tick.

And I study the ticks of Australia and elsewhere (>70 papers published) including two monographs, "Barker & Walker (2014) Ticks of Australia. The species that infest domestic animals and humans” (144 pages) and "Barker & Barker (2023) Ticks of Australasia: 125 species of ticks in and around Australia" (644 pages).

Collaborations

  • Dr Adny Walker, Institute of Molecular Biosciences (IMB), The University of Queensland 
  • Associate Professor Graham Leggatt, SCMB & Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland 
  • Professor Dmitry Apanaskevich, The Smithsonian, & Georgia South University, Statesboro, GA, USA
  • Dr Ryo Nakao, University of Hokkaido, Sapporo, Japan 
  • Professor Lance Durden, Georgia South University, Statesboro, GA
  • Dr Alex Gofton, CSIRO
  • Dr Ben Mans, Onderstepoort Veterinary Instituted Pretoria, South Africa

Funded projects

  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
  • ARC funding to Dr Andy Walker 
  • Development of a membrane-feeding-system to allow the large-scale production of the Australian paralysis tick, Ixodes holocyclus (2025; Dogs Queensland)

Teaching interests 

Genetics, Genomics and Parasitology especially PARA3002 (Biomedical Parasitology), which I have coordinated for 35 years.

  • BIOC6001 Introduction to Molecular Biology Laboratory
  • BIOL3009 Arthropods and Human Health
  • PARA3002 Biomedical Parasitology

Community out-reach

  • Paralysis ticks, people, dogs and cats.

Student supervision

Available projects:

  • The paralysis-toxin of the eastern paralysis tick, Ixodes holocyclus.
  • Are the the species-level genomic-lineages of Australian ticks morphologically distinguishable?
  • Host-parasite associations of the fleas of Australia
  • Insights into the function and evolution of mitochondria (mt), and the animals that harbour these mt, from entire nuclear and mt transcriptomes (Illumina HiSeq data) and from entire mt genome transcripts (PacBio data).
  • Species-level phylogeny of ticks: join the International Tick Tree of Life Project.
  • Students will sequence part of the mitochondrial genomes of ticks from Africa and elsewhere then use a computer to predict the evolutionary tree of the ticks.

Featured publications - last 5 years