Two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors have been awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships.

This year’s Illinois fellows are evolution, ecology and behavior professor Alison Bell (GNDP leader) and architecture professor Paul Hardin Kapp.

They are among 188 writers, scholars, artists and scientists chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from nearly 3,000 applicants, according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s press release.

In light of long-standing inequities in STEM representation, many universities are now recognizing the value of diversity in higher education. Achieving such diversity involves creating an inclusive campus that welcomes scholars from different backgrounds, not only to foster a healthy intellectual environment, but also to provide role models to aspiring students. Faculty cluster hiring is an emerging practice in higher education, involving cross-campus collaborations to hire faculty working on interdisciplinary research topics.

Animals can influence their offspring through multiple signals starting from fertilization to after birth. However, researchers have seldom looked at how these different signals work together to influence behavior. In a new study, postdoctoral researcher Jennifer Hellmann in the Bell lab investigated how changes in sperm and paternal care influence the offspring of threespine sticklebacks.

Six faculty members at Illinois, including two from IGB, have been elected 2020 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Professor of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior Alison Bell will be assuming leadership of the Gene Networks in Neural & Developmental Plasticity (GNDP) research theme at the IGB. Bell will succeed Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Lisa Stubbs, who has accepted a position at Pacific Northwest Research Institute.

Many new parents are familiar with terms like “baby brain” or “mommy brain” that hint at an unavoidable decline in cognitive function associated with the hormonal changes of pregnancy, childbirth, and maternal caregiving. A new study of parental care in stickleback fish is a reminder that such parenting-induced changes in the brain and associated shifts in cognition and behavior are not just for females—and they’re not just for mammals either.

Throughout the living world, parents have many ways of gifting their offspring with information they will need to help them survive. A new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution examining the effects of exposure to predators across two generations of stickleback fish yielded a surprising insight into how such transgenerational information is used.

A five-minute encounter with an outsider spurs a cascade of changes in gene activity in the brain that can last for hours, researchers report in a study of stickleback fish.

The three-spined stickleback is a funny sort of a fish. They’re somewhat non-distinct: drabbish silver, small, and minnow-like, native to salt- and freshwater bodies throughout most of the Northern hemisphere. However, different stickleback populations have evolved very distinct morphological traits, demonstrating a natural diversity that makes them an ideal candidate in which to examine the mechanics of adaptive evolution and ecology.