Dara Orbach

I am a marine biologist and a new Research Associate at Mount Holyoke College. My M.S. research (University of Western Ontario) assessed the obstacle avoidance capabilities of bats and explored their alcohol tolerance. I then transitioned from getting bats drunk to filming dolphin sex for my Ph.D. (Texas A&M University at Galveston). I researched the coevolution of female pre-copulatory (behavioral) and post-copulatory (anatomical) mating strategies among whales, dolphins, and porpoises. I was fortunate to travel around the world filming cetaceans mating and to dissect the reproductive tracts of > 100 specimens. The incredible diversity I discovered in female reproductive morphology across cetacean species made it very obvious (to me) that sexual selection is the prime driving factor, but to empirically test my hypotheses, there is a need to explore male and female genital shape together.

December 2016