David Lowry

In the field

About Me

I am a third year graduate student in the Duke University Program in Genetics and Genomics, who hails from the redwood empire and wine country of Northern California. I spent 4.5 years of long latte-drinking nights at UC Berkeley during the thrilling boom and crash of the dot-com era. After college, I set out to explore the finer delights of world cultures and wildlife before joining the grind of graduate school. Alas, my time at Duke has been good to me thanks to many fantastic people and my amazingly optimistic leader/advisor, Dr. Johh Willis.

The focus of my research is directed toward understanding the genetics of adaptation and speciation. To this end, I have chosen to study how divergent adaptation of the yellow monkey flower (Mimulus guttatus), to the coast versus inland habitat, contributes to reproductive isolation. I am using a combination of QTL mapping, candidate gene strategies, and microarrays (yes, we will get there) to determine the genetic mechanisms that underlie the divergence of morphological and life-history traits between coast and inland Mimulus. Further, I have carried out reciprocal transplant experiments and population genetic analysis to demonstrate that coast and inland Mimulus are locally adapted and reproductively isolated. In the future, I plan on creating near isogenic lines, with QTLs of large effect, for field experiments to test hypotheses of adaptation and ecogeographic reproductive isolation.

Important Things

Contact Info: You can contact me at david.lowry@duke.edu.

Make sure to check out the Mimulus Community.

See the relationship of coast and inland populations as determined by neutral microsatellite loci.

Check out my Poster from the Genetics of Speciation Conference in Vancouver BC, summer 2006.

Poster for Genetics of Speciation Conference

Treat your fears with Mimulus.

Every week I will post a link to a paper that I really like on the Paper of the Week page.

Bioinformatic/Statistical Software and Resources

• Bonferroni Correction Calculator
• Apollo
• sim4
• BLAT
• NCBI Trace Archives
• ClustalW
• Primer 3
• Q-Value calculator

Population Genetic Software

• TESS
• FSTAT
• Tassel
• Arlequin
• Structure
• Mark Beaumont
• Geographic distance matrix generator
• Genepop (web)
• Dyerlab (Population Graphs)
• Isolation by Distance
• Genetic Data Analysis
• Software for Populaiton Genetic Analysis
• Ian Wilson (Batwing)
• Jody Hey (SITES)
• Structurama
• DNASP
• SNAP

Analysis of fitness data

• ASTER

Abiotic Stress Websites

• Drought Tolerance Arabidopsis
• How to measure soil salinity

Other useful sites

• Blank Outline Maps that can be used to make figures.

Field Sites

Habitat of coastal Mimulus

United States

• Copperopolis
• Montana de Oro State Park
• Big Creek Reserve
• Bodega Marine Lab
• Angelo Reserve
• Redwood National Park
• Saddle Mountain

Canada

• Botanical Beach
• Gwaii Haanas
• Bamfield Marine Science Center
• Pacific Rim National Park

Friends

• Sri Kosuri
• Kevin Wright

Publications

Wu, C. A., D. B. Lowry, A. M. Cooley, K. M. Wright, Y. W. Lee, and J. H. Willis. (2007). Mimulus is an emerging model system for the integration of ecological and genomic studies. Heredity In Press

Lowry, D. B., R. C. Rockwood, J. H. Willis. (2007). The genetic and ecological mechanisms of incipient speciation through geographic race formation. In Prep

Quotes

"There is keen delight in the quick experience, of knowing that no harm comes of a wetting at high canon wall, slips up behind the ridge to cross it by some windy broad-leaved hellebore, and beat down the mimulus beside the brook." -Mary Austin