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Patty Brennan

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Patricia Brennan
Alma materUniversidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (BSc)
Cornell University (PhD)
AwardsNational Science Foundation CAREER Award (2021)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Doctoral advisorStephen Emlen
Paul Sherman
Other academic advisorsRichard Prum
Tim Birkhead
Websitehttp://www.pattybrennan.com/

Patricia "Patty" Brennan is a Colombian and American evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist. She is a professor of biology at Mount Holyoke College,[1] and her research focuses on sexual selection, sexual conflict, and genital coevolution in vertebrates.[2]

Brennan's work on the genital morphology of waterfowl, particularly her research on duck penises and her discovery of variations in duck vaginas,[2] has received extensive press coverage in publications like The New York Times,[3][4] The Guardian,[5] National Geographic,[6] and Scientific American.[7] Her work on snake and dolphin clitorises has been featured in publications such as The Atlantic,[8] Smithsonian Magazine,[9] New Scientist,[10] and The Washington Post.[11] She is an advocate for basic science,[12][13] as well as for further research into vertebrate vaginas.[14][15][16]

Early life and education

Brennan was born in Bogotá, Colombia. She completed her Bachelor of Science in marine biology at the Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano in 1994.[2] In 2005, she received her Doctor of Philosophy in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell University, where she studied the reproductive biology of the great tinamou at the La Selva Biological Station.[17] While conducting field research, she observed a corkscrew-shaped tinamou penis[2] and wrote a post-doctoral project on bird genitalia after identifying a lack of research on the subject.[18]

Career

From 2005 to 2008, Brennan held a joint postdoctoral appointment at the University of Sheffield and Yale University, where she continued her research on the great tinamou[19] and begin studying duck genitalia with Richard Prum and Tim Birkhead.[2] After she received funding from the National Science Foundation to study duck penises, she was attacked by right-wing media for what was characterized as "wasteful" government spending.[20] In response, she defended her work and the broader importance of basic research in the online magazine Slate[12] and in the journal BioScience,[13] and she began campaigning to support other scientists who dealt with similar attacks.[21] She worked at Yale until 2009, after which she joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a research professor.[22] Brennan joined the biological sciences faculty at Mount Holyoke College in 2015.[23] In 2021, she received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to study reproductive structures in snakes.[24] In 2022, Brennan was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her contributions to biological sciences.[25]

External media

  • In 2012, Brennan made an appearance in a PBS miniseries on sexual selection in the episode "What Males Will Do".[26]
  • In 2017, Brennan was featured in the XX Files video series by Science.[27]

References

  1. ^ "Patty Brennan". Mount Holyoke College. Archived from the original on 2022-12-14.
  2. ^ a b c d e Brennan, Patricia (2020-10-05). "Patricia Brennan". Current Biology. 30 (19): R1064–R1066. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.071. ISSN 0960-9822. PMC 7534590. PMID 33048049.
  3. ^ Zimmer, Carl (2007-05-01). "In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays Out in the Evolution of Genitalia". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2022-12-06.
  4. ^ Zimmer, Carl (2013-06-06). "The Sex Life of Birds, and Why It's Important". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2013-06-06.
  5. ^ Sample, Ian (2009-12-22). "Video reveals twists and turns of genital warfare in ducks". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2013-09-08.
  6. ^ Goodman, Jason G. (2017-09-19). "Duck Penises Grow Bigger Among Rivals". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 2021-02-26.
  7. ^ "Clash of the Duck Genitalia". Scientific American. 2007-05-02. Archived from the original on 2021-12-02.
  8. ^ Wu, Katherine J. (2022-12-14). "Surprise! Snakes Have Clitorises". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2022-12-14.
  9. ^ Osborne, Margaret (2022-12-14). "Scientists Discover That Snakes Have Clitorises". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 2022-12-14.
  10. ^ Hamzelou, Jessica (2022-01-10). "What dolphins reveal about the evolution of the clitoris". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 2022-11-20.
  11. ^ Brulliard, Karin (2017-05-02). "Dolphin sex is literally kinky". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2017-05-02.
  12. ^ a b Brennan, Patricia (2013-04-02). "Why I Study Duck Genitalia". Slate. Archived from the original on 2022-12-08.
  13. ^ a b Brennan, Patricia L.R.; Irschick, Duncan J.; Johnson, Norman; Albertson, R. Craig (2014-02-06). "Oddball Science: Why Studies of Unusual Evolutionary Phenomena Are Crucial". BioScience. 64 (3): 178–179. doi:10.1093/biosci/bit039.
  14. ^ Salas, Javier (2022-03-07). "'Many scientists have studied penises, but there is an incredible gap in our understanding of vaginas'". El País English Edition. Archived from the original on 2022-12-10.
  15. ^ Gross, Rachel E. (2022-03-31). "Why Have Female Animals Evolved Such Wild Genitals?". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 2022-11-20.
  16. ^ Cooke, Lucy (June 2022). Bitch: On The Female Of The Species (1 ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 103. ISBN 9781541674899. Retrieved March 18, 2022.
  17. ^ Brennan, Patricia L. R. (2009). "Incubation in Great Tinamou (Tinamus major)". The Wilson Journal of Ornithology. 121 (3): 506–511. doi:10.1676/08-073.1. ISSN 1559-4491. JSTOR 20616938. S2CID 86683863.
  18. ^ "Patricia Brennan, Biological Sciences". Mount Holyoke College. 2019-01-01. Archived from the original on 2022-12-28.
  19. ^ Marshall, Michael (2010-07-14). "Zoologger: Eggs with an 'eat me' sign". New Scientist.
  20. ^ Baako, Ann. "Patricia Brennan wants you to consider the duck penis". Mount Holyoke News. Mount Holyoke News. Retrieved March 18, 2022.
  21. ^ Brennan, Patricia. "Research". Patty Brennan. Retrieved March 18, 2022.
  22. ^ "Patricia L. R. Brennan : Department of Biology : UMass Amhest". UMass Amherst. 2011-05-24. Archived from the original on 2022-10-05.
  23. ^ "Patricia Brennan | Mount Holyoke College". Mount Holyoke College. Archived from the original on 2016-12-22.
  24. ^ "NSF Award Search: Award # 2042260 - CAREER: INTEGRATING FORM AND FUNCTION IN THE COEVOLUTION OF COPULATORY TRAITS". National Science Foundation. 2021-04-30.
  25. ^ "2022 AAAS Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)". www.aaas.org. Archived from the original on 2023-02-14.
  26. ^ "What Males Will Do". PBS. 2012-03-14. Archived from the original on 2014-12-05.
  27. ^ "Animalia genitalia : Patty Brennan". Science. 2017-01-17.
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