Caitlin McDonough

1-917-620-7629
mcdonouce@gmail.com

I’m interested in reproductive biology and sexual selection.

Education:

Ph.D. – Syracuse University, 2014 – present

Post-bac – IRTA Fellow, NIH/NIEHS, 2014

B.S. – Beloit College, 2012

Research Interests:

Female reproductive secretions are putatively involved in a large variety of ejaculate-female interactions and postcopulatory processes that mediate competitive fertilization success, optimize reproductive investment, and/or mitigate costs of mating. However, little is known about their source, contents or function.The focus of my research is to identify female contributions to the reproductive environment through characterization of the parovaria, a secretory gland of the Drosophila female reproductive tract. I aim to explore both the function and evolution of these secretions using RNAseq to compare postmating gene expression profiles among several species of Drosophila, identify rapidly evolving candidate genes, and use transgenic knockdown of these genes to study their role in postcopulatory events.