Presgraves' work has contributed to the current understanding of sexual selection, meiotic drive, and the X-Chromosome's evolutionary importance. His work has led to the confirmation of a phenomenon called the "large X-effect," which describes the integral role of the X-Chromosome as a wedge in driving speciation.[3]
In 2003, Presgraves was awarded the Dobzhansky Prize by the Society for the Study of Evolution in recognition of his accomplishments as an outstanding young evolutionary biologist. He was the first Dobzhansky Prize winner to have been trained by a previous recipient of the prize: H. Allen Orr.[2]
^Masly, J.P. and D.C. Presgraves (2007) High-resolution genome-wide dissection of the two rules of speciation in Drosophila. PLoS Biology, 5: 1890-1898.
^Presgraves, D.C. (2005) Recombination enhances protein adaptation in Drosophila melanogaster. Current Biology 15: 1651–1656. [Faculty of 1000 selection]
^Presgraves, D.C., L. Balagopalan, S.A. Abmayr and H.A. Orr (2003) Adaptive evolution drives divergence of a hybrid inviability gene between two species of Drosophila. Nature 243: 715–719. (Featured in “News & Views” piece by M. Noor, pp. 699–700). [Faculty of 1000 selection]
^Betancourt, A.B. and D.C. Presgraves (2002) Linkage limits the power of natural selection in Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 99: 13616–13620. (Featured in “Dispatch” piece by G. Marais and B. Charlesworth in Current Biology 13: R68–70)
^Presgraves, D.C. and H.A. Orr (1998) Haldane's rule is obeyed in taxa lacking a hemizygous sex. Science 282: 952–954. (Featured in a “Perspectives” piece by M. Turelli).