Jessica Lynch Alfaro

I am a biological anthropologist whose research centers on the evolution of diversity in socially learned behaviors, mating strategies and social structuring in platyrrhine primates. My research focuses most strongly on the genera Sapajus and Cebus, the capuchin monkeys. Like humans, capuchins are a recent and successful radiation of weedy generalists, able to survive even in marginal habitats through extractive foraging and tool use. Populations of capuchin monkeys in the wild differ markedly from one another in social and sexual behaviors and in grouping patterns, and thus provide an excellent system for comparative study of both cultural and genetic variation.