David Wood

I am researching how mother and father titi monkeys distribute the effort of infant care, both behaviorally and energetically. Titi monkeys (genera: Callicebus, Plecturocebus, and Cheracebus) have some of the most actively caring mammalian fathers. To better understand how males and females cooperate to raise their young I study both wild and captive monkeys. I observe how wild titi monkeys parents raise their infants in the environment in which they evolved at Estación Biológica Quebrada Blanco, in the Peruvian Amazon. At the California National Primate Research Center, in Davis California, I can carefully measure behavior (using video cameras), bodily movement (using accelerometer collars), and total caloric energy expenditure (using doubly labeled water) to compare fathers and mothers to each other, to other fathers and mothers, and to nonreproducing males and females to understand the energy they spend on infant care.