People

Rachel Fordyce

Lab Technician

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My interest in bees revolves around plant insect interactions, floral and brood cell microbiomes, and native bee habitat preservation and restoration. My role as a technician in the Danforth Lab is to contribute to experimental design, molecular lab work, field work, and data analysis for experiments pertaining to these areas.

Currently, my research projects include lab and field studies of the brood cell microbiome of Osmia cornifrons, as well as the management of our Osmia colonies; DNA barcoding of bees from a variety of sources that are difficult or impossible to ID morphologically, including construction of phylogenetic trees and the development of a more robust barcode database of the bees of New York state; and field collection of pollen samples for microbial studies of bees in multiple clades.

I received an MS in Plant Biology from UC Davis in 2017 where I focused on plant genetics and plant-microbe interactions and performed a Genome Wide Association (GWA) study of polygenic defense responses of plants to a generalist necrotrophic fungus. I have been working in the Danforth Lab since 2019.