California Lutheran University received its largest National Science Foundation grant to date — $307,486 for a biologist and her students to study sexual selection in tiny Brazilian squirrel monkeys.
Assistant professor Anita Stone, the lead principal investigator, and 12 undergraduate students will spend four summers studying sexually selected traits and behaviors in the Saimiri collinsi species living in the eastern Amazonia forest. The Thousand Oaks resident wants to determine whether the females actively choose their mates, or passively accept the winners of male-male competitions.