Dr Alison Fletcher

Reader

Alison's background is in Biology and Psychology (BSc (hons, University of Stirling), with her PhD gained in Zoology from University of Bristol.

Qualifications

BSc (Hons), PhD

Overview

Alison joined the University of Chester in 1999, following Research Fellow positions at University of York and a Postdoc at Miami University, Ohio. She teaches on modules that include Introduction to Animal Behaviour, Research Methods, Animal Cognition, Animal Behaviour & Conservation and also supervises dissertation students, many of whom present their work at national conferences.

Alison is currently Editor of Origin, an in-house undergraduate journal showcasing the best of final year dissertation work in Biological Sciences.

Research

Alison's main research interests lie in the behavioural development of primates, particularly of great apes (specifically gorillas), and in the laterality of behaviour, or ‘handedness'. Her work is ethologically based, concentrating on observation of ‘natural' behaviour, both in the wild and captivity.

Postgraduate supervision of PhD and Masters research include studies of social and behavioural development of western gorillas (wild and captive studies) and of barbary macaques; maternal investment in mountain gorillas; attitudes towards community conservation; and spontaneous hand use preferences in humans.

More recent interests involve aggression in non-human primates and the effect of habitat loss on the behaviour of Bornean orangutans.

Published work

Hutchinson, J.E. & Fletcher, A.W. (2010). Using behavior to determine immature life-stages in captive western gorillas. American Journal of Primatology, 72(6):492-501.

Nowell, A.A. & Fletcher, A.W. (2008). The development of feeding behaviour in wild western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). Behaviour, 145(2): 171-193.
Nowell, A.A. & Fletcher, A.W. (2007). The development of independence from the mother in wild western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). International Journal of Primatology, 28(2): 441-455.
Fletcher, A.W. (2006). Clapping in chimpanzees: evidence of exclusive hand preference in a spontaneous, bimanual gesture. American Journal of Primatology, 68(11): 1405-1412.
Nowell, A.A. & Fletcher, A.W. (2006). Food transfers in immature wild western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). Primates, 47(4): 294-299.
Fletcher, A.W. & Weghorst, J.A. (2005). Laterality of hand function in naturalistically-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Laterality: 10:219-242.
Fletcher, A. (2001). Development of infant independence from the mother in wild mountain gorillas. In Robbins, M.M., Sicotte, P. & Stewart, K.J. (Eds.). Mountain Gorillas: Three Decades of Research at Karisoke. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 153-182.