Summary
Domino became interested in conservation genetics during her undergraduate degree, working on UK butterflies with Natural England for her PhD and first post doc. Trying to better understand adaptive change lead to a switch in allegiance from insects to fishes (although she still has a soft spot for insects) and she worked with Prof. Ole Seehausen first at Hull and then in Lucerne, Switzerland before being awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to work on "bower-building" cichlid fishes. She became a lecturer at Hull in 2010 and enjoys teaching evolution and behaviour (among other things).
University of East Anglia. BSc (hons) Ecology with Biology
University of Birmingham Ph.D. ‘The use of molecular genetics in the formulation of conservation strategies for Lepidoptera’.
Jan 2003-June 2006 Leverhulme Trust PDRA, University of Hull and EAWAG Luzern, Switzerland “The cichlid fish species flocks in African lakes: single founders or hybrid swarms?”
June 2007-Aug 2010Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship “Habitat driven runaway sexual selection fuels speciation”. University of Hull.
Sept 2010-July 2013 Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, University of Hull
August 2013-presentSenior Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, University of Hull
HEA Fellow (2016)
Journal Article
Widespread genetic signals of visual system adaptation in deepwater cichlid fishes
Camacho García, J. I., Malinsky, M., Joyce, D. A., Santos, M. E., Vernaz, G., Ngochera, M. J., & Svardal, H. (2025). Widespread genetic signals of visual system adaptation in deepwater cichlid fishes. Molecular biology and evolution, 42(7), Article msaf147. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf147
Dynamic co-evolution of transposable elements and the piRNA pathway in African cichlid fishes
Almeida, M. V., Blumer, M., Yuan, C. U., Sierra, P., Price, J. L., Quah, F. X., Friman, A., Dallaire, A., Vernaz, G., Putman, A. L., Smith, A. M., Joyce, D. A., Butter, F., Haase, A. D., Durbin, R., Santos, M. E., & Miska, E. A. (2025). Dynamic co-evolution of transposable elements and the piRNA pathway in African cichlid fishes. Genome Biology, 26(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-03475-z
Subtropical specialists dominate a coral range expansion front
Chong, F., Soong, G. Y., Hakim, A. A., Burke, C., De Palmas, S., Gösser, F., Hsiao, W. V., Kise, H., Nishijima, M., Iguchi, A., Sommer, B., Joyce, D., Beger, M., & Reimer, J. D. (in press). Subtropical specialists dominate a coral range expansion front. Coral Reefs, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-024-02601-w
Genotype But Not Body Shape Predicts River Migration Success in Atlantic Salmon
Moccetti, P., Bolland, J. D., Adams, C. E., Rodger, J. R., Honkanen, H. M., Newton, M., Lothian, A. J., Nunn, A. D., & Joyce, D. A. (2024). Genotype But Not Body Shape Predicts River Migration Success in Atlantic Salmon. Ecology and Evolution, 14(12), Article e70682. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70682
Environmental fluoxetine promotes skin cell proliferation and wound healing
Rodriguez-Barucg, Q., Garcia, A. A., Garcia-Merino, B., Akinmola, T., Okotie-Eboh, T., Francis, T., Bringas, E., Ortiz, I., Wade, M., Dowle, A., Joyce, D. A., Hardman, M. J., Wilkinson, H. N., & Beltran-Alvarez, P. (2024). Environmental fluoxetine promotes skin cell proliferation and wound healing. Environmental pollution, 362, Article 124952. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2024.124952
Research interests
I'm interested in the behavioural and genomic adaptations of animals (primarily freshwater fishes). This is because these adaptations can lead to the formation of new species, and understanding how species evolve is of fundamental importance to biodiversity and conservation.
I use haplochromine cichlid fishes as my primary study system, but I've recently discovered that Atlantic salmon are also fun to work on, and I'm interested in the role that anthropogenic pressures can exert on natural populations which may lead to evolutionary change in populations over time.
I lead the Happy Chemical Cluster, and you can find out more about this here:
https://happychemical.wordpress.hull.ac.uk/
Lead investigator
Project
Funder
Grant
Started
Status
Project
Missing Salmon - does their DNA hold the answer?
Funder
Atlantic Salmon Trust
Grant
£32,760.00
Started
1 October 2019
Status
Complete
Project
Fish adaptation to depth: alternative splicing in the twilight zone?
Funder
Fisheries Society of the British Isles
Grant
£1,000.00
Started
28 May 2018
Status
Complete
Co-investigator
Project
Funder
Grant
Started
Status
Project
NERC Discipline Hopping: Fish on chips: developing a new microfluidics model as a tool for testing and mitigating the effects of environmental and biological contaminants on fish
Funder
Natural Environment Research Council
Grant
£13,582.17
Started
1 December 2022
Status
Complete