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Faculty and Research

Faculty Member

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Laura Stein

Laura Stein

 Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences Sutton Hall 301 Phone: 405-325-4821 Ph.D., Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution - University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2015

RESEARCH:

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. Our lab uses an integrated approach incorporating behavioral observation, neuroendocrine approaches, and genomic tools to answer broad questions from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. We 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.

Selected Publications:

Stein, L. R. and Bell, A.M. (2019) The role of variation and plasticity in parental care during the adaptive radiation of threespine sticklebacks. Evolution 73: 1037-1044.

Bukhari, S. A., Saul, M. C., James, N., Bensky, M., Stein, L. R., Trapp, R., Stubbs, L., and Bell, A. M. (2019) Neurogenomic insights into paternal care and its relation to territorial aggression. Nature Communications 10: 1-11.

Stein, L. R., Bukhari, S. A., and Bell, A. M. (2018) Personal and transgenerational cues are redundant at the phenotypic and molecular level. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2: 1306-1311.

Stein, L. R., Trapp, R. M., and Bell, A.M. (2016) Do reproduction and parenting influence personality traits? Insights from threespine stickleback. Animal Behaviour 112: 247-254.

Bell, A. M., McGhee, K. M., and Stein, L. R. (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 Bell, A. M. (2015) Consistent individual differences in paternal behavior: a field study of threespine stickleback. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 69: 227-236.

Stein, L. R. and Bell, A.M. (2014) Paternal programming in sticklebacks. Animal Behaviour 95: 165-171.