Alison M. Bell

Alison M. Bell is an American ecologist who studies animal behaviour at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She has focussed on the evolution of and mechanisms that underpin animal personality. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Alison Marie Bell
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
University of California, Davis
University of Glasgow
ThesisEffects of an endocrine disrupter on the development of behavioral differences between individuals and populations of threespined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) (2003)

Early life and education

Bell was an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago, where she studied the history and philosophy of science.[1] She moved to the University of California, Davis for her graduate studies, where she earned a doctorate in population biology. Her doctoral research considered the three-spined stickleback, a species she became an expert in.[2] Bell was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Glasgow, before joining the University of California, Davis.[1][3]

Research and career

Bell was the 2012 recipient of the Young Investigator Award from the Animal Behavior Society. Her research considers animal behavioural syndromes and their impacts.[2] The molecular mechanisms that underpin how animals coordinate their behaviour is still unclear.[4] In particular, Bell has studied why individual three-spined sticklebacks behave differently to one another.[5]

She used sticklebacks as a test species to understand the changes in brain activity associated with being a parent.[6] Bell studied male sticklebacks, which provide care to their eggs and build their nests. Bell finds the interactions between male sticklebacks and their young especially interesting because they are not the typical changes associated with female sitcklebacks gestating; they occur exogenously.[7] Bell studied the gene expression of male sticklebacks before and after becoming fathers, at three points of the hatching process.[7] She found an overlap between the genes associated with parental care in stickleback fathers and those of maternal mice. In 2020 Bell was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[8]

Selected publications
  • Sih, Andrew; Bell, Alison; Johnson, J.Chadwick (2004). "Behavioral syndromes: an ecological and evolutionary overview". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 19 (7): 372–378. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2004.04.009. ISSN 0169-5347.
  • Sih, Andrew; Bell, Alison M.; Chadwick-Johnson, J.; Ziemba, Robert (2004). "Behavioral Syndromes: An Integrative Overview". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 79 (3): 241–277. doi:10.1086/422893. ISSN 0033-5770.
  • Bell, Alison M.; Hankison, Shala J.; Laskowski, Kate L. (2009-04-01). "The repeatability of behaviour: a meta-analysis". Animal Behaviour. 77 (4): 771–783. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.12.022. ISSN 0003-3472. PMC 3972767.

References
  1. "People – Bell Lab". Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  2. Bureau, News. "Alison Bell receives Animal Behavior Society Young Investigator Award". news.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  3. "Behavioral syndromes". Sih Lab. 2012-08-01. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  4. PennisiJun. 17, Elizabeth; 2020; Pm, 2:00 (2020-06-17). "Fighting fish synchronize their moves—and their genes". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2020-12-14.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. Bureau, News. "Five Urbana-Champaign campus professors named University Scholars". news.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  6. Bell, Alison M.; Trapp, Rebecca; Keagy, Jason. "Parenting behaviour is highly heritable in male stickleback". Royal Society Open Science. 5 (1): 171029. doi:10.1098/rsos.171029. PMC 5792893. PMID 29410816.
  7. "Fish fathers exhibit signatures of 'baby brain' that may facilitate parental care behavior". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  8. "AAAS Announces Leading Scientists Elected as 2020 Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science". www.aaas.org. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
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