My research seeks to understand the causes and consequences of behavioral plasticity, how behavior influences evolutionary patterns, and how experience, in particular between parents and offspring, shapes development.  I use an integrated approach incorporating behavioral observation, neuroendocrine approaches, and genomic tools to answer broad questions from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. I use two excellent models of plasticity and evolution, the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) and the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), to investigate outstanding questions in this field.

Current subjects of interest include:

• Information integration across timescales
• Neural mechanisms of behavioral plasticity
• Evolution of parental effects
• Evolutionary consequences of correlated suites of traits
• Adult experience and plasticity

• Stein, L.R., S.A. Bukhari, A.M. Bell. 2018. Personal and transgenerational cues are redundant at the phenotypic and molecular level. Nature Ecology and Evolution, in press
• Stein, L.R., R.M. Trapp, and A.M. Bell. 2016. Do reproduction and parenting change personality? Insights from threespine stickleback. Animal Behaviour 112: 247-254.
• Bell, A.M., K.M. McGhee, and L.R. Stein. 2016. Effects of mothers’ and fathers’ experience with predation risk on the behavioral development of their offspring in threespined sticklebacks. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 7: 28-32.
• Stein, L.R., and A.M. Bell. 2015. Consistent individual differences in paternal behavior: a field study of threespine stickleback. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 69: 227-236.
• Stein, L.R., and A.M. Bell. 2014. Paternal programming in sticklebacks. Animal Behaviour 95: 165-171.