Alison M Bell

About

Alison M Bell is a Professor in the Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior Department at the Illinois College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Neuroscience Program. Her research interests focus on the proximate causes and ultimate consequences of individual differences in behavior. She holds a BA from the University of Chicago and a PhD from the University of California, Davis. Additionally, she completed postdoctoral research at the University of Glasgow and the University of California, Davis. Dr. Bell has received several awards and honors, including the Richard and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar, Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Quest Award from the Animal Behavior Society, and the New Investigator Award from the same society. She is also affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and serves as the Interim Associate Dean for Research at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Research topics

• Biology
• Genetics
• Ecology
• Zoology
• Developmental psychology
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Social psychology
• Statistics
• Demography

Selected publications

• Sex‐specific plasticity across generations I: Maternal and paternal effects on sons and daughters

  Journal of Animal Ecology · 2020 · 54 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Intergenerational plasticity or parental effects-when parental environments alter the phenotype of future generations-can influence how organisms cope with environmental change. An intriguing, underexplored possibility is that sex-of both the parent and the offspring-plays an important role in driving the evolution of intergenerational plasticity in both adaptive and non-adaptive ways. Here, we evaluate the potential for sex-specific parental effects in a freshwater population of three-spined st…

  DOI

• Sex‐specific plasticity across generations II: Grandpaternal effects are lineage specific and sex specific

  Journal of Animal Ecology · 2020 · 37 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Transgenerational plasticity (TGP) occurs when the environment encountered by one generation (F0) alters the phenotypes of one or more future generations (e.g. F1 and F2). Sex selective TGP, via specific lineages or to only male or female descendants, has been underexplored in natural systems, and may be adaptive if it allows past generations to fine-tune the phenotypes of future generations in response to sex-specific life-history strategies. We sought to understand if exposing males to predati…

  DOI

• Predictors of individual variation in reversal learning performance in three-spined sticklebacks

  Animal Cognition · 2020 · 29 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Designing eco‐evolutionary experiments for restoration projects: Opportunities and constraints revealed during stickleback introductions

  Ecology and Evolution · 2024-06-01 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Eco‐evolutionary experiments are typically conducted in semi‐unnatural controlled settings, such as mesocosms; yet inferences about how evolution and ecology interact in the real world would surely benefit from experiments in natural uncontrolled settings. Opportunities for such experiments are rare but do arise in the context of restoration ecology—where different “types” of a given species can be introduced into different “replicate” locations. Designing such experiments requires wres…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Divergence in Reproductive Behaviors Is Associated with the Evolutionary Loss of Parental Care

  The American Naturalist · 2024-01-16 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The mechanisms underlying the divergence of reproductive strategies between closely related species are still poorly understood. Additionally, it is unclear which selective factors drive the evolution of reproductive behavioral variation and how these traits coevolve, particularly during early divergence. To address these questions, we quantified behavioral differences in a recently diverged pair of Nova Scotian three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) populations, which vary in parenta…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• MIRA: The biological basis of paternal care in stickleback fish

  NIH · $2.0M · 2021–2026

• DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Flexible stem and parental effects: synthesizing and applying two models of rapid evolution to the threespine stickleback radiation

  NSF · $14k · 2012–2015

• Epigenetic mechanisms and consequences of fathering in sticklebacks

  NIH · $337k · 2008–2019

Frequent coauthors

• John Robertson

  Arizona State University

  27 shared

• J. D. Loudon

  27 shared

• J. A. Downes

  University of Southampton

  27 shared

• H Lowenthal

  University of Glasgow

  27 shared

• E Polan

  University of Glasgow

  27 shared

• A Middleton

  Loughborough College

  27 shared

• Mr Poucher

  University College London

  27 shared

• J Pickthall

  University of Glasgow

  27 shared

Labs

• Bell LabPI

Awards & honors

• Richard and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar
• Fellow, Animal Behavior Society
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Quest Award, Animal Behavior Society
• New Investigator Award, Animal Behavior Society

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Rashid Bashirh-83
• Neal J Cohenh-74
• Adrienne M. Antonsonh-15