Personal Home Page

Professor;
Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1988

Research and Professional Interests:

I am an evolutionary geneticist who does both experimental and theoretical work. I study the relationship between genetic variation, phenotypic variation, and adaptation. Our biggest unknowns in biology are the paths through which genetic variation affects the phenotype, and in turn how the phenotype affects organismal fitness. My work is aimed at understanding this genotype-phenotype-fitness map. In my laboratory work, we use Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, to get at these questions using a combination of molecular, genetic, and whole-organism techniques. The fruit-fly system is ideal for addressing complex evolutionary questions that are not accessible in any other organism. Our current projects are of the roles of development in shaping the evolution of wing shape and of the relationship between natural and sexual selection. We have undertaken a wide variety of other projects using flies in the past. My current theoretical work concerns measurement theory, the relationship between reality and the numerical representations of that reality. With Thomas Hansen and other collaborators we are reworking traditional measures of variation, evolvability, constraint, genetic effects, selection and fitness from a measurement theoretical perspective.

Copies of these papers are available from the Publications page of my Personal Home Page.

Houle, D. 2009. Evolution in Health and Medicine Sackler Colloquium: Numbering the hairs on our heads: The shared challenge and promise of phenomics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA Epub ahead of print.

Gomulkiewicz, R., and D. Houle. 2009. Joint demographic and genetic constraints on evolution. The American Naturalist 174:E218-E229.

Hollis, B., J. Fierst, and D. Houle. 2009. Sexual selection accelerates the elimination of a deleterious mutant in Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution 63:324-333.

Hansen, T. F., and D. Houle. 2008. Measuring and comparing evolvability and constraint in multivariate characters. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 21:1201-1219.

van der Linde, K., and D. Houle. 2008. A supertree analysis and literature review of the genus Drosophila and closely related genera (Diptera, Drosophilidae). Insect Systematics and Evolution 39:241-268.

Mezey, J. G., and D. Houle. 2005. The dimensionality of genetic variation for wing shape in Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution 59:1027-1038.

Fuller, R. C., D. Houle, and J. Travis. 2005. Sensory bias as an explanation for the evolution of mate preferences. American Naturalist 166:437-446.

Rifkin, S. A., D. Houle, J. Kim, and K. P. White. 2005. A mutation accumulation assay reveals a broad capacity for rapid evolution of gene expression. Nature 438:220-223.

Hereford, J., T. F. Hansen, and D. Houle. 2004. Comparing strengths of directional selection: how strong is strong? Evolution 58:2133-2143.

Marquez, Eladio José

Graduate Students:

Fierst, Janna L
Griffin, Donald
Hollis, Brian
Nye, Jessica
Schwinn, Stephanie

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