My research focuses on the role of maternal behavior, genetic factors, and social context in shaping individual differences in temperament and behavior in a pedigreed colony of vervet monkeys. I am particularly interested in variation in the mother –infant relationship and lifetime maternal investment in the context of environmental demands and reproductive tradeoffs, and life history transitions during the juvenile and adolescent periods. Recent research combines longitudinal measures of biobehavioral traits with a pedigree-based statistical genetics approach to identify heritability and genetic loci for individual differences in novelty seeking, impulsivity, sociability, and cortisol response to stressful life events.