Achievement

Columbia Trainee Su-Jen Roberts was one of 10 finalists to win a monetary award in the May 2011 NSF IGERT poster competition. Her poster, “Combining Behavior and Genetics to Investigate Resident Male Reproduction in Blue Monkeys,” describes preliminary results of her interdisciplinary research aimed at understanding animal breeding systems. Studying a species that lives in one-male groups, she found that the number of simultaneously conceptive females and tenure length were negatively correlated with the probability that the resident male sired an infant. When many conceptive females were present, the resident male was unable to guard all at the same time and was more likely to lose paternity to extra-group males. A male had higher success early in his tenure. The number of males present did not affect a male's siring success. These results are among few for primates living in one-male social groups, and suggest limits to the degree to which a male can monopolize reproduction.