PhD Student, Georgetown University, USA
mollyhmcentee@gmail.com
Molly joined the Mann lab as a PhD student in 2017, where her research is focused on female bottlenose dolphin reproductive behavior in the face of allied sexual coercion. Bottlenose dolphins have a complex, promiscuous, and coercive mating system characterized by high rates of male aggression. Her dissertation will examine the costs of reproduction to females in this system, as well as the behavioral strategies used to mitigate these costs, including female cooperation and female mate choice.
Molly received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Williams College in 2014. As an undergraduate, she worked on a variety of different research projects, studying the ecology of deep-sea cold-seep ecosystems at the Duke Marine Lab, and completing an honors thesis at Williams on the pollination network of bunchberry dogwood. Prior to graduate school, Molly worked as a research assistant for several behavioral ecology projects. She moved to Kenya for a year to study the behavioral ecology of spotted hyenas with the Mara Hyena Project under Professor Kay Holekamp. She then spent a field season in the Bay of Fundy studying the conservation ecology of the endangered North Atlantic right whale, before returning to Kenya to study the social behavior of olive baboons with the Comparative Analysis of Baboon Sociality project under Professor Joan Silk.
