About Me

The Santa Rosa Primate Project (SRPP) was started by Linda Fedigan (University of Calgary) in 1983 and is now one of the longest-running research projects focusing on platyrrhine primates. I began my research at the site in 1997 and became co-director of the project founder in 2004. As the focus of the SRPP grew to include more indepth ecological analyses, we invited Amanda Melin (University of Calgary) to join as another co-director in 2011 and Fernando Campos became the 4th co-director in 2023 (University of Texas, San Antonio). Via my collaborations with the Santa Rosa research team, graduate students, and a number of experts in the areas of primate genetics, endocrinology, and sensory ecology, my research makes use of long-term demographic, life history, behavioral, and biological data to examine male reproductive strategies throughout the life course. Since beginning my studies in Santa Rosa, I have also been intimately involved in the on-going study of the long-term population trends of the capuchin and howler monkeys in the park. The SRPP has been conducting park-wide censuses of these two primates since 1983, in order to track the effects of forest protection, forest regeneration, and climate change on primate populations. In 2022, we established the Santa Rosa Primate Conservation Fund, a non-profit dedicated to expanding knowledge, education, and conservation of wild primates in the endangered tropical dry forests of the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Click here to support our research, conservation, and local capacity-building initiatives