Dr. Graham Bell

GRAHAM BELL has worked on several basic issues in ecology and evolution. He helped to develop the modern evolutionary theory of aging, and performed experimental tests of its premises and predictions. His book on the evolution of sex was among the first to argue that the function of sex is to produce recombinant progeny which are resistant to prevailing diseases, and has been followed up by theoretical and comparative investigations of this idea. To pursue these and other issues in the laboratory, he has established "Chlamydomonas" as a model system in which evolutionary mechanisms can be studied in detail under controlled conditions. At the same time, field experiments have linked the laboratory system with the response of native plants to environmental variability in undisturbed primeval forest.