Daniel Powell

Assistant Professor

E-mail: dpowell2@lsu.edu

Office: 684 Life Sciences Building

Lab: 680 and 682 Life Sciences Building

Website: Under construction

CURRICULUM VITAE

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Area of Interest

How reproductive barriers between species arise and are maintained are foundational questions in evolutionary biology. One powerful way to study reproductive barriers is to dissect the scenarios in which they breakdown. In particular, I am interested in how the mechanisms of sexual selection act on such barriers to geneflow between species. This includes the phenotypic, genetic, and genomic consequences of their breakdown. My lab addresses these questions using a diverse toolkit including behavioral ecology, field work with natural populations, laboratory crosses, and quantitative and population genomics. To do this we primarily study a group of Northern swordtail fishes (genus Xiphophorus) that form replicated hybrid zones across different rivers as well as different species pairs in nature. We have three main areas of focus aimed at disentangling the effects of sexual selection on reproductive isolation, and the degree to which such effects are repeatable across different evolutionary distances. These are:

1) To characterize the genetic architecture of sexually selected traits and preferences.

2) To evaluate the role of sexual signals and mate preferences in maintaining reproductive barriers.

3) To determine whether the dynamics of the breakdown of sexual communication can predict introgression of genes underlying sexually selected traits across diverse species groups.

I encourage inquiries from prospective graduate students and postdoctoral researchers or anyone else interested in evolution, speciation, or swordtails.

Selected Publications

B.M. Moran, C.Y. Payne, D.L. Powell, E.N.K. Iverson, S.M. Banerjee, Q.K. Langdon, T.R.
Gunn, F. Liu, R. Matney, K. Singhal, R.D. Leib, O. Hernandez-Perez, R. Corbett-Detig, M. Schartl, J.C. Havird, M. Schumer, (2024). A Lethal Genetic Incompatibility between Naturally Hybridizing Species in Mitochondrial Complex I. Nature.

S.M. Banerjee*, D.L. Powell*, B.M. Moran, W.F. Ramírez-Duarte, Q.K. Langdon, T.R. Gunn, G. Vazquez, C. Rochman and M. Schumer (2023). Complex hybridization between deeply diverged fish species in a disturbed ecosystem. Evolution.

Payne, C., Bovio, S., Powell, D.L., Gunn, T., Banerjee, S., Grant, V., Rosenthal, G. G. and Schumer, M., (2022). Genomic insights into variation in thermotolerance between hybridizing swordtail fishes. Molecular Ecology.

Q.K. Langdon, D.L. Powell, B. Kim, S.M. Banerjee, C. Payne, T.O. Dodge, B.M. Moran, P. Fascinetto-Zago, M. Schumer, (2022). Predictability and parallelism in the contemporary evolution of hybrid genomes. Plos Genetics.

D.L. Powell, B.M. Moran, B. Kim, S.M. Banerjee, S.M. Aguillon, P. Fascinetto-Zago, Q.K. Langdon and M. Schumer, (2021). Two new hybrid zones expand the swordtail hybridization model system. Evolution.

B.M. Moran, C. Payne, Q. Langdon, D.L. Powell, Y. Brandvain and M. Schumer, (2021). The genomic consequences of hybridization. eLife.

D.L. Powell, C. Payne, S.M. Banerjee, M. Keegan, E. Bashkirova, R. Cui, P. Andolfatto, G.G. Rosenthal and M. Schumer, (2021). The Genetic Architecture of Variation in the Sexually Selected Sword Ornament and Its Evolution in Hybrid Populations. Current Biology.

D.L. Powell, M. Garcia, M. Keegan, P. Reilly, K. Du, A. Diaz-Loyo, S. Banerjee, D. Blakkan, D. Reich, P. Andolfatto, G.G. Rosenthal, M. Schartl, M. Schumer, (2020). Natural hybridization reveals incompatible alleles causing melanoma in swordtail fish. Science.

M. Schumer, D.L. Powell, R. Corbett-Detig, (2020). Versatile simulations of admixture and accurate local ancestry inference with mixnmatch and ancestryinfer. Mol. Ecol. Res.

M. Schumer, C. Xu, D.L. Powell, C. Holland, P. Andolfatto, G. G. Rosenthal, M. Przeworski, (2018). Natural selection interacts with local recombination rates to shape the evolution of hybrid genomes. Science.

T.H. Pires, E.A. Borghezan, V. N. Machado, D.L. Powell, C.P. Röpke, C. Oliveira, J. Zuanon, I.P. Farias, (2018). Testing Wallace's intuition: water type, reproductive isolation, and divergence in an Amazonian fish. J. Evol. Biol.

M. Schumer, D.L. Powell, P. Delclós, M. Squire, R. Cui, P. Andolfatto, G.G. Rosenthal, (2017). Assortative mating explains persistent reproductive isolation in hybrids. PNAS.

D.L. Powell and G.G. Rosenthal, (2016). What artifice can and cannot tell us about animal behavior. Curr. Zool.

M. Schumer, R. Cui, D.L. Powell, G.G. Rosenthal, and P. Andolfatto, (2016). Ancient hybridization and genomic stabilization in a swordtail fish. Mol. Ecol.

N. Mercado-Silva, J. Lyons, R. Moncayo-Estrada, P. Gesundheit, T. J. Krabbenhoft, D.L. Powell and K.R. Piller, (2015). Stable isotope evidence for trophic overlap of sympatric Mexican Lake Chapala silversides (Teleostei: Atherinopsidae: Chirostoma spp.) Neotropical Ichthyology.

M. Schumer, R. Cui, D.L. Powell, R. Dresner, G.G. Rosenthal and P. Andolfatto, (2014). High-resolution mapping reveals hundreds of genetic incompatibilities in hybridizing fish species. eLife.