Daven Presgraves, PI
Daven received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biology from the University of Maryland at College Park with Jerry Wilkinson and his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Rochester with Allen Orr. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Munich with Wolfgang Stephan and an NIH-NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University with Andy Clark. Daven is now an Associate Professor at the University of Rochester. The Presgraves Lab, founded in summer 2005, works on evolutionary genetics using Drosophila species as models with funding from the NIH, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation.

Amanda Larracuente, Postdoc
Amanda received her B.S. in Biology from Canisius College in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Genetics from Cornell University, where she performed comparative analyses of the 12 Drosophila genomes, studied the factors affecting protein-coding sequence evolution, and investigated the genetics and evolution of the D. pseudoobscura neo-Y chromosome with Andy Clark. Amanda is now working on the population genomics of the Segregation Distorter complex and studying the evolution and regulation of the Responder satellite DNAs in D. melanogaster. Visit Amanda’s web site here.

Shanwu Tang, Graduate Student
Shanwu received his B.S. in Biology from Wuhan University and his M.S. degrees in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Rochester. He is now working on the molecular evolution and genetics of inviability in D. melanogaster-D. simulans hybrids caused by incompatibilities among protein components of the nuclear pore complex.

Emily Landeen, Graduate Student
Emily received her B.S. from the University of Arizona, where she worked with Michael Nachman. She is now studying the regulation of the X chromosome in the Drosophila male germline, and she’s working to determine the molecular and evolutionary basis of the the special role played by the X chromosome in speciation between D. mauritiana and its sibling species.

Cara Brand, Graduate Student
Cara received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she worked with Jerry Wilkinson. She then spent a year as research technician in Jerry Wilkinson’s lab, working on hybrid male sterility and meiotic drive in stalk-eyed flies. She is now studying the population genetics of interspecific introgression between Drosophila simulans clade species (with Dan Garrigan), evolutionary history of the Segregation Distorter system, and the molecular genetic basis of evolved differences in the rate of recombination between Drosophila species.

Justin Roncaioli, Undergraduate Researcher
Justin is a Senior in the Undergraduate Program in Biology working towards his B.S in Molecular Genetics (with minors in Chemistry and Psychology). He is currently doing Independent Research in the lab on suppressors of the Segregation Distorter complex in D. melanogaster.

Ben Goulet, Undergraduate Researcher
Ben is a Junior in the Undergraduate Program in Biology working towards his B.S in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. He is now working on the molecular basis of a hybrid lethal incompatibility between Drosophila mauritiana and its two sister species.

Christina Muirhead, Computational Biologist
Christina (“Tee”) received her B.S. in Mathematics from Yale University and her Master’s from the University of Oregon, where she studied under Russ Lande. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under Montgomery Slatkin. She then did a postdoc with John Wakeley at Harvard University. Tee is now contributing to our divergence population genomics analysis between D. mauritiana and D. simulans.

Benjamin Metcalf, Laboratory Technician
Ben received his B.S. in Biology from Le Moyne College and his M.S. in Biology from Syracuse University, where he worked with William T. Starmer on cactophilic Drosophila. After several years as a molecular biologist in industry, Ben returned to academic research on flies. He’s now working on the molecular genetic basis of hybrid incompatibilities.

FORMER LAB MEMBERS

Victoria Cattani, Graduate Student
Vicky received her Licenciatura in Ciencias Biológicas from the University of Buenos Aires and her M.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Rochester. She worked on the evolution and genetics of a lethal X-autosome hybrid incompatibility between D. mauritiana and its two sibling species, D. simulans and D. sechellia. She also studied the evolution of the genetic control of recombination rate differences between species of Drosophila. In 2012, Vicky completed her Ph.D. and moved on to a postdoc doing evolutionary genomics in C. elegans in Matt Rockman‘s lab at NYU.

Sarah Kingan, Postdoc
Sarah received her B.S. in Biology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University where she studied the evolution and population genetic history of a cryptic sex ratio distorter system in the Drosophila simulans clade species with Dan Hartl. She worked on the genomics of complex speciation between D. simulans, D. mauritiana, and D. sechellia.  Sarah has migrated to Dan Garrigan‘s lab, where she continues her work on population genomics in D. mauritiana.

Colin Meiklejohn, Postdoc
Colin received his B.A. in Biology from the University of Chicago and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University where he studied the population genetics and transcriptional evolution of genes with male-biased expression in Drosophila with Dan Hartl. He was a NIH-NRSA postdoctoral researcher at Brown University where he worked on cytonuclear incompatibilities between closely related Drosophila species with David Rand. He studies the evolution and regulation of the X chromosome in the male germline and the evolution of gene interactions affecting gene expression in Drosophila (funded by a NSF grant to CDM). In 2012, Colin moved to Indiana University.

Pierre Gerard, Postdoc
Pierre received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Genetics from the University of Paris VII and the University of Nancy, and his Ph.D. in forest genetics from ENGREF Paris. He worked on the genetics and evolution of embryonic lethality in D. simulans-D. melanogaster hybrids. Pierre is now a postdoc at the Université Paris-Sud XI with Catherine Montchamp-Moreau.