Luis Javier Madrigal Roca
- Doctoral Candidate
Contact Info
Biography —
Faculty Mentor: Dr. John K. Kelly
Research Interest: Study how mutation, selection, and drift shape genetic variation in natural populations of the yellow monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus, with a focus on chromosomal inversions, codon usage bias and linked selection, and environmental drivers of allele-frequency change. My approach combines population genomics, quantitative genetics, and statistical modeling.
Hometown: Havana, Cuba
Education —
Selected Publications —
1. Madrigal-Roca, L. J. and Kelly, J. K. The dynamics of “silent” variation in Mimulus guttatus: codon usage bias and linked selection. Preprint, 2026. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.18.725996
2. Madrigal-Roca, L. J. ErrorTracer: Bayesian error propagation and forecast uncertainty decomposition. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. In review, 2026.
3. Tusuubira, S., Madrigal-Roca, L. J., Brown, K., and Kelly, J. K. Evolve and resequence provides a granular view of micro-evolution under different mating systems in Mimulus guttatus. Genetics. In review, 2025.
4. Madrigal-Roca, L. J. and Kelly, J. K. (2025). Are you with me? Co-occurrence tests from community ecology can identify positive and negative epistasis between inversions in Mimulus guttatus. PLOS ONE 20(4): e0321253.
5. Veltsos, P., Madrigal-Roca, L. J., and Kelly, J. K. (2024). Testing the evolutionary theory of inversion polymorphisms in the yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus). Nature Communications 15, 10397.
Selected Presentations —
1. Madrigal-Roca, L. J. Mutation, Selection, and Drift Shape Codon Usage Bias in Mimulus guttatus. Oral presentation, Evolution Meeting 2026. Presenter.
2. Madrigal-Roca, L. J. Decoding Environmental Drivers of Genetic Selection: An Elastic Net Approach to SNP-Environment Associations. Oral presentation, Evolution Meeting 2025. Presenter.
Awards & Honors —
Mary Harkey Hall Botany Endowment Award for Research and for Travel, University of Kansas (2026).
KU Graduate Student Travel Fund, University of Kansas (2026).
Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) (2026).
Doctoral Student Research Fund (DSRF), University of Kansas (2025).
Florene B. Fratcher Botany Fellowship, University of Kansas (2024).
International Special Prize at the VII Student Congress on Scientific and Technological Research (September 14 and 15, 2022) held at the Universidad del Caribe, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Work: “Description of the population structure of Strombus gigas (Littoriv nimorpha: Strombidae) in the insular platform of Cuba through microsatellite loci”.
Second Prize of International Special Category at the VI Student Congress on Scientific and Technological Research (September 15 and 16, 2021) held at the Universidad del Caribe, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Work: “Genetic structure of Chelonia mydas from nesting areas of the southwestern region of Cuba inferred through two statistical approaches”.
CITMA (Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment) Prize to Researcher Students 2022 in the fields of Exact and Natural Sciences.
Scientific Merit Prize for Students Highly Involved in Research of the University of Havana.