Lisa Rose: Behavioral Ecology of Capuchin Monkeys

"Mr. B," a mid-ranking male who was killed by invading males during a group takeover in 1997.

The major questions that I am interested in are the relative benefits and costs of living in groups, particularly for females, and patterns of social interaction within and between the sexes. Male capuchins emigrate prior to maturity, but most females remain and breed in the group where they are born, resulting in a female bonded social system. This led me to ask the question 'why have resident males' in groups. Males are dominant over females and one might assume impose a cost in terms of resources, so what benefits do they provide in return? Also, capuchin groups vary considerably in the number of males in each group, and the ratio of adult ales to females. How does this affect group time budgets and social relationships?

One finding of my research is that adult males often contribute to infant care. Here Nancite group's alpha male, Mel, sits with Split's infant while she drinks at the waterhole.

In addition to these 'social' questions, which are of fundamental interest to most primatologists, I am also very interested in predation both on and by primates. One very productive area of my research has been a study of hunting by white-faced capuchins. In 1996, I was invited to a symposium at the joint American and International Primatological Societies where we compared chimpanzees and capuchins, and compiled a special issue of IJP describing our findings. My interest in early hominid evolution and the application of primate behavioral ecology to it led to a collaborative paper (Meat Eating, Hominid Sociality and Home Bases Revisited, Current Anthropology 37: 307-338, 1996) with archaeologist Dr. Fiona Marshall in our department, a project which we both enjoyed immensely. I will also be participating in a Wenner-Gren conference on the role of meat-eating in human evolution, bringing a New World monkey perspective to this issue.