Janine Rose V. KLein

I am an animal behavioral ecologist and evolutionary theorist interested in how organisms resolve biological trade-offs between cooperation, health, and reproduction.

I study how these decisions play out across the life course, from personality and collective action in group-living primates, to maternal investment, gestational timing, and disease risk across species.

Primate Personality and Social Behavior

Individual monkeys face trade-offs when deciding whether to participate in risky cooperative behaviors like intergroup encounters, balancing costs against potential benefits. Animal personality can bias how individuals resolve these trade-offs. How does an animal’s personality influence its interactions with other individuals, its role within a group, and its fitness? Such questions are important for making inferences about the evolution of our own sociality, cooperative patterns, and what makes us unique as individuals! It may also help us predict how individuals will respond to changing environments, an important aspect of conservation for primates and other vulnerable species.

Primate Health and Reproduction

Reproduction and health are shaped by trade-offs that unfold across the life course. How do organisms balance competing demands between somatic maintenace and reproductive investment? My work explores questions such as why cancer risk varies across species and life histories, and how maternal bodies regulate gestational length under different conditions. By taking a comparative and evolutioanry perspective, this research aims to better understand how disease risk and reproductive outcomes emerge from the fundamental trade-offs that shape life history strategies.