Codimension 1 Subvarieties of {\mathcal{M}_g } and Real Gonality of Real Curves

Let ${\mathcal{M}_g }$ be the moduli space of smooth complex projective curves of genus g. Here we prove that the subset of ${\mathcal{M}_g }$ formed by all curves for which some Brill-Noether locus has dimension larger than the expected one has codimension at least two in ${\mathcal{M}_g }$ . As an application we show that if ${X \in \mathcal{M}_g }$ is defined over $\mathbb{R}$ then there exists a low degree pencil ${u:X \to \mathbb{P}^1 }$ defined over $\mathbb{R}.$