Damian Dowling, Post doc.

Publications

Contact

E-mail
damiankd[AT]cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Address
Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia

I was a post-doc at Uppsala University between 2004 and 2007.

I am now at the Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia.

You can view my current homepage, including a full list of publications, at:

http://www.ceb.uwa.edu.au/our_people/damian_dowling/.

My current contact address is:

damiankd@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

I will endevour to keep my ‘in print’ publication list, with links to pdfs, up-to-date here.

Research interests -

My research interests lie generally within the field of Evolutionary Biology. I am currently interested in exploring the importance of epistatic genetic interactions (both inter- and intra-genomic) on organismal fitness. I have received funding for this research from the Wenner-Gren Foundations, Swedish Institute, and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

1. Cytoplasmic-nuclear genetic epistasis for fitness
a. The adaptive evolution of mitochondrial DNA.
(Project collaborators: Göran Arnqvist, Urban Friberg, Alexei Maklakov, Katia Chavez Abiega)
My current research focuses on disentangling the relative contribution of cytoplasmic and nuclear genes to fitness-related traits. The mitochondrial genome is generally regarded as a passive bystander in adaptive evolution. However, this is controversial because interactions between mitochondrial and nuclear genes are essential for energy production, and thus selection should shape these interactions. There is rapidly accumulating evidence that suggests that the mitochondrial genome plays a key role in adaptive evolution. We have initiated a research program designed to explore such cytoplasmic-nuclear genetic epistasis for fitness, at both a within- and among-population level. We have found sizeable interactions between cytoplasmic and nuclear genes for fitness. The outcomes of these inter-genomic interactions appear to be environment-specific. These results support the suggestion that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evolves adaptively.
b. Effects of cytoplasmic genes on sperm traits and implications for sperm competition theory.
(Project collaborators: Göran Arnqvist, Urban Friberg, Albert Larkeson Nowostawski)
Because mtDNA is maternally inherited, mtDNA mutations that have adverse effects when expressed in males, but not females, will not be removed by selection and may accumulate within populations. Sperm quality is a likely candidate of such mutations because sperm is produced only by males, is energetically costly to produce and contains mitochondria in the flagella enabling motility. Such mutations may reduce the ability of testes to produce large numbers of viable sperm and/or reduce sperm motility. We have found that cytoplasmic genes affect both the sperm viability and length phenotype. Thus, the adaptive evolution of two important components of sperm quality may be constrained since these traits are partially determined by cytoplasmic (presumably mtDNA) genes.

2. The evolutionary and behavioural ecology of the mating systems and life-histories of birds
My PhD research (completed in 2004 and supervised by Raoul Mulder at the University of Melbourne) explored the evolutionary ecology of a wild population of red-capped robins. I combined field research and molecular techniques to examine effects of parental quality on sex allocation and the relationships between parental quality and reproductive success. Previous to this, I conducted a project that explored the nature of a host-ectosymbiont interaction in the Seychelles warbler. This was conducted in collaboration with Jan Komdeur (University of Groningen), David Richardson (now at the University of East Anglia) and Karen Blaakmeer.