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
Cannibalism as a mechanism to offset reproductive costs in three-spined sticklebacks
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-01-02
articleOpen accessABSTRACT Parents often go to great lengths to promote the survival of their offspring, yet in many species parents may abandon or cannibalize offspring under their care. Using three-spined sticklebacks, where males are the sole providers of energetically costly parental care, we investigated the factors driving patterns of cannibalism in two natural populations in the field. Cannibalism was prevalent in both populations: more than 70% of parenting males contained embryos in their stomach. Neither standard length nor body condition predicted the number of embryos eaten, suggesting that males are not cannibalizing based on energetic need alone. However, males cannibalized significantly more embryos from large compared to small broods, suggesting that greater access to embryos is driving high levels of cannibalism. Using microsatellites to determine parentage, we investigated whether males cannibalize embryos fertilized by other males (heterocannibalism) to mitigate the costs of parental care. In both populations males engaged in both filial and heterocannibalism, but the two populations significantly differed in the relative amount of filial versus heterocannibalism, suggesting that males in these two populations face different reproductive costs. Combined, results from this study help disentangle the complex factors contributing to cannibalism, providing insight into how animals balance reproductive costs and benefits.
Freshwater Biology · 2026-04-01 · 1 citations
articleOpen accessABSTRACT Predicting the distance between an individual's release point into a new environment and their subsequent location (‘displacement’) could be useful during biological ‘introduction’ events (e.g., invasions/translocations) because variation in displacement could lead to spatially‐structured ecological and evolutionary effects, as well as implications for efforts to control introduction outcomes (e.g., establishment success). Two challenges limit our ability to predict post‐introduction displacement. First, displacement is shaped by individual movement, and many factors affect movement. As such, considerable recent effort has focused on finding particularly influential factors, including bold and exploratory behaviour. Second, movement patterns often differ between environments. Predicting post‐introduction displacement therefore benefits from assessments in the most relevant environment—that in which the introduction is occurring. Conservation translocations provide a rare opportunity to overcome both challenges by allowing assessment of how behaviour might be associated with post‐introduction displacement in the new environment. Our study leveraged a conservation translocation where threespine stickleback ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ) from seven source populations were introduced into one ‘recipient’ lake. Our study focused on comparisons of the genetics (source population ancestry) and behaviour (bold and exploratory) of individuals subsequently showing lower displacement (captured at the release site) versus greater displacement (captured farthest from the release site). Bold behaviour was assessed as latency to emerge from shelter, whereas exploratory behaviour was the number of unique sections crossed in an open field. Fish from the different source populations showed different bold and exploratory behaviours; yet those population‐level differences were not associated with post‐introduction displacement. At the individual level in the recipient lake, however, fish showing greater displacement 1 month after release were less exploratory than those showing lower displacement. This association between capture location and exploratory behaviour was no longer evident a year later, implying that the original association was related to initial post‐release displacement. Our work highlights how exploratory behaviour might be associated with displacement following introduction into a new environment. More broadly, our study provides rare insights into the extent to which post‐introduction displacement is predictable in a real‐world setting, and it also underscores the value of conducting experimental manipulations in nature.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-01-02
articleOpen accessSenior authorIntroduction: Three-spined stickleback fish are famous for their diversity and charismatic social behavior. However, there are few neuroanatomical resources for studying the neural and brain mechanisms underlying their fascinating behavior. Methods and Results: We identify 11 brain areas important for social behavior by referencing brain atlases for six other teleost fishes. Brain regions were identified via neuroanatomical landmarks and we characterized the presence / absence of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), a key gene product of the dopaminergic system, in those regions. Comparing the neuroanatomical location of these regions in the stickleback brain and the expression of TH therein to that of other fish species highlights similarities and differences and the need for a brain atlas specific to sticklebacks. This resource serves as a map of the location of regions important for social behavior in the stickleback brain. Conclusion: This resource will help guide future studies connecting gene function to social behavior through the brain and will enable future work to understand the evolution of neural mechanisms that contribute to the diversity of social behavior in this emerging model organism.
Collective behavior diverges independently of the benthic-limnetic axis in stickleback
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorAbstract Comparing populations across replicate environments or habitat types can help us understand the role of ecology in evolutionary processes. If similar phenotypes are favored in similar environments, parallel evolution may occur. Collective behavior, including collective movement and social networks, can play a key role in the adaptation by animals to different environments. However, studies exploring the parallelism of collective behavior are limited, with research traditionally focusing on morphological traits. Here, we asked if collective behavior varies consistently across replicate populations of benthic and limnetic three-spined stickleback ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ). There were repeatable, population-level differences in collective behavior in a common garden experiment, with some populations forming groups that were more cohesive and with higher strength and clustering coefficients. However, these differences were not predicted by ecotype (benthic vs. limnetic). Latency to emerge and morphology did consistently differ between ecotypes, and there were no correlations between these traits and collective behavior. Together, these results suggest that collective behavior diverges, but not in a way that is associated with variation along the benthic-limnetic axis. By examining multiple traits, we show how phenotypic evolution can be occurring in parallel and non-parallel ways at the same time. This study further highlights that the classification of habitat types may only be relevant for certain traits, with collective behavior potentially changing in a more nuanced manner.
The brain in motion <b>Natural Neuroscience</b> <i>Nachum Ulanovsky</i> MIT Press, 2025. 302 pp.
Science · 2025-07-03
article1st authorCorrespondingBehaviors are features, not bugs, in our quest to understand neural processes.
Hormones and Behavior · 2025-12-13 · 1 citations
articleSenior authorEvidence of parental care as a novel reproductive isolating mechanism
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-04-21 · 5 citations
preprintOpen accessSenior authorABSTRACT Variation in behavior can contribute to reproductive isolation by preventing gene flow among populations. Here, we tested the novel hypothesis that parental care, when dysregulated, can act as a reproductive isolating mechanism in three-spined stickleback fish ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ). In the typical “common” stickleback ecotype, males provide care to their offspring through pectoral fanning and nest attendance. In contrast, a divergent “white” stickleback ecotype has evolutionarily lost care and disperses embryos into the surrounding environment. We examined how paternal care from common, white, and F1 hybrid fathers influenced the survival of offspring. We detected no intrinsic incompatibilities in embryos, but hybrid fathers exhibited dysregulated parental care and increased rates of filial cannibalism. These results may explain why genetic divergence between these phenotypically distinct ecotypes is so low and provide evidence that dysregulated parental behavior can cause behavioral sterility and thereby act as a novel postzygotic reproductive isolating barrier.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-04-17
preprintOpen accessSenior authorABSTRACT Steroid hormones play a role in regulating social behaviors in vertebrates, but how they mediate the evolution of these traits remains an open question. Here, we use liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to quantify a panel of steroids in breeding males of two recently diverged populations of threespine stickleback. The common ecotype provides paternal care, while the white ecotype has evolutionarily lost paternal care. Hormone levels were quantified in both ecotypes at three reproductive stages: (1) after completing a nest, (2) soon after mating, when commons start to provide care and whites disperse the embryos, and (3) four days after mating, when commons are performing parental care and no longer courting females while whites are not providing care and are courting females. Androgens declined in the common ecotype as they began providing care but remained elevated in the white ecotype across stages, possibly to maintain the production of “spiggin,” the androgen-dependent glue males use to construct nests. Progestogen levels were low in whites and were lowest in commons after mating, suggesting an antagonistic relationship between progestogens and sexual behavior. Both ecotypes showed elevated glucocorticoids after mating, suggesting the stress axis may not have diverged between ecotypes. Altogether, these results provide evidence that the ecotypes regulate steroid levels differently to support the ways they balance mating and parental effort. Our data suggest a variety of mechanisms by which steroid signaling and regulation can change during the early stages of divergence between behaviorally distinct populations.
Discrete genetic modules underlie divergent reproductive strategies in three-spined stickleback
Journal of Heredity · 2025-10-22
articleSenior authorA central challenge in biology is to understand how complex behaviors evolve. Reproductive behaviors are frequently subject to strong selection and complex behavioral traits often evolve as an integrated package. However, it is unclear whether suites of traits evolve through a few pleiotropic genetic changes, each affecting many behaviors, or by accumulating several changes that, when combined, give rise to an entire package of correlated traits. Typically, three-spined stickleback exhibit paternal care, a behavior that characterizes the entire Gasterosteidae family. However, an unusual "white" three-spined stickleback ecotype exhibits a suite of traits associated with the evolutionary loss of paternal care. In the white ecotype, males disperse embryos from their nests rather than care for them, build loose nests, exhibit high rates of courtship, and are relatively small in body size. These differences are apparent in stickleback reared in a common garden environment, suggesting the differences have a heritable basis. In an F2 intercross (n = 76 to 133), we show that these traits are genetically uncorrelated and map to different genomic regions, suggesting that components of the white reproductive strategy segregate independently and evolved through the addition of multiple genetic changes. Moreover, distinct sets of genes may be involved in regulating the same motor pattern across contexts. These results contribute to the growing body of evidence that behavioral diversity observed in nature may evolve by accumulating and combining alleles, each with modular effects, and show that this principle applies to a suite of behavioral traits that form an integrated strategy.
Brain Behavior and Evolution · 2025-03-28 · 5 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorINTRODUCTION: A central question about the evolution of social behavior is how extensive diversity can arise when behaviors depend on shared neural, molecular, and hormonal mechanisms. Comparing close relatives can offer insights into which components of shared mechanisms are most evolvable. METHODS: We discriminate between two nonexclusive hypotheses by which conserved neural mechanisms might evolve to generate differences in social behavior: changes in the number or activity of neurons. We test these hypotheses in two recently diverged ecotypes of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus); the common ecotype provides parental care, while the white ecotype does not. We used double-label fluorescent immunohistochemistry with pS6, a marker of transcriptionally active neurons, to quantify the number and activity of two preoptic neuropeptidergic cell types that affect parental care across vertebrates: galanin (Gal) and oxytocin (OXT). RESULTS: Ecotypes did not differ in the overall activity of the preoptic area or the number of Gal and OXT neurons but did differ in the activity of Gal and OXT neurons. The activity of these neurons changed across reproductive stages in the common but not the white ecotype. Activity peaked after mating in commons when males began to care for their offspring, suggesting that changes in the activity of these specific preoptic neurons are required to transition from courtship to parenting. CONCLUSION: Overall, our study suggests that rapid behavioral evolution occurred via changes in the activity but not the number of specific preoptic neuropeptidergic neurons.
Recent grants
MIRA: The biological basis of paternal care in stickleback fish
NIH · $2.0M · 2021–2026
NSF · $14k · 2012–2015
Epigenetic mechanisms and consequences of fathering in sticklebacks
NIH · $337k · 2008–2019
Maternal and paternal effects on behavior in threespined sticklebacks
NSF · $485k · 2011–2018
Epigenetic mechanisms and consequences of fathering in sticklebacks
NIH · $2.3M · 2008–2021
Frequent coauthors
- 27 shared
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
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
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