Torrington Native Jamie Lenz Earns Summer Research Award

EASTON, MA (04/10/2012)(readMedia)-- Torrington native Jamie Lenz will be one of 50 students from Stonehill College working with faculty members at the College this summer on research projects through the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. The SURE Program provides students with an opportunity to perform significant, publishable research under the guidance of an experienced faculty researcher.

Lenz, a junior biology major at Stonehill, along with three other students, will work with Professor Brownyn Bleakley, assistant professor of Biology, on a project titled Indirect Genetic Effects on Behavior.

Both wild and inbred guppies, Poecilia reticulata, cooperate in social networks to perform many behaviors in response to predatory threats. The research group will use inbred strains of guppies to control the genes (carried in individuals) present in different social groups to continue research that took place during the 2011 SURE program. Lenz will initiate a new project looking at variation in filial cannibalism. These new studies will be combined with findings from 2011 in a paper that will be submitted for publication.

The scholars and their faculty mentors are the 17th group to work under the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. SURE Scholars will engage in weekly meetings to discuss the progress of their projects and other topics of general interest, and will be paid a stipend for their full-time service. All SURE Scholars will present summaries of their summer's work at an all-campus poster session in the early fall.

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