Laboratory Members
Rachel A. LaBranche, Undergraduate '09
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| With Lauren Ackein and Sophie Valena - Coming back from a trip to Whale Lake |
As an undergraduate biology student, my interests have always lain with the “big-picture” topics of evolution, ecology, and animal behavior. Imagine my delight to learn that the three-spine stickleback is the perfect model system for studying all of these things! Although this is my first year being truly involved with projects in the lab, I have spent my undergraduate career learning about the stickleback and performing various research projects associated with the adaptive radiation of this small fish in classes like Evolution and Animal Behavior. Natural Historyor a similar journal about advances in our understanding of all aspects of the remarkable radiation of the threespine stickleback during my senior year at Clark. I hope, in combination with photographs taken by Anna Mazzarella, we will be able to produce an exciting and vivid update of the 1990 Natural History article on research involving this wonderful adaptive radiation.
Outside the lab
This past year, I was a member of Clark’s varsity women’s rowing team. As a coxswain, it was my role to be the person in the back of the boat yelling ateveryone to pull harder. This was a fun job at 5 in the morning! I am also a tour guide working in Admissions, and a member of the Scarlet Key advisory board which oversees all of the tour guides and senior interviewers at Clark.
When not encouraging rowers or prospective students, I am usually tucked into a corner somewhere with my laptop hard at work on any one of a number of novels I am currently writing. As biology is the only real thing that can tear my attention away from my writing, I was glad to find a way to unite the two.
Awards
Richard P. Traina Scholar 2005-09
Send Rachel email at RLaBranche@clarku.edu.