The ontogeny of each individual contributes to the physical, physiological, cognitive, neurobiological, and behavioral capacity to manage the complex social relationships and diverse foraging tasks that characterize the primate order. For these reasons Building Babies explores the dynamic multigenerational processes of primate development. The book is organized thematically along the developmental trajectory:conception, pregnancy, lactation, the mother-infant dyad, broader social relationships, and transitions to independence. In this volume, the authors showcase the myriad approaches to understanding primate developmental trajectories from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. These collected chapters provide insights from experimental manipulations in captive settings to long-term observations of wild-living populations and consider levels of analysis from molecule to organism to social group to taxon. Strepsirrhines, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans are all well-represented. Contributions by anthropologists, microbiologists, psychologists, population geneticists, and other primate experts provide Building Babies a uniquely diverse voice.

Building Babies features multi- and trans-disciplinary research approaches to primate developmental trajectories and is particularly useful for researchers and instructors in anthropology, animal behavior, psychology, and evolutionary biology. This book also serves as a supplement to upper-level undergraduate courses or graduate seminars on primate life history and development. In these contexts, the book provides exposure to a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives on developmental trajectories and models how researchers might productively integrate such approaches into their own work.

Inhalt
Preface.- I. CONCEPTION & PREGNANCY.- 1. Inflammation, reproduction, and the Goldilocks Principle.- 2. The primate placenta as an agent of developmental and health trajectories across the lifecourse.- 3. Placental development, evolution, and epigenetics of primate pregnancies.- 4. Nutritional ecology and reproductive output in female chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): variation among and within populations.- II. FROM PRE- TO POST-NATAL LIFE.- 5. Prenatal androgens affect development and behavior in primates.- 6. Navigating transitions in HPA function from pregnancy through lactation: implications for maternal health and infant brain development.- 7. Genome-environment coordination in neurobehavioral development.- 8. Building Marmoset Babies: Trade-offs and Cutting Bait.- III. MILK: COMPLETE NUTRITION FOR THE INFANT.- 9. Lactational programming: mother?s milk predicts infant behavior and temperament.- 10. Do bigger brains mean better milk? .- 11. Infant gut microbiota: developmental influences and health outcomes.- IV. MOTHERS AND INFANTS: THE FIRST SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP.- 12. Maternal influences on social and neural development in rhesus monkeys.- 13. Behavioral Response of Mothers and Infants to Variation in Maternal Condition: Adaptation, Compensation and Resilience.- 14. The role of mothers in the development of tool-use in chimpanzees.- V. THE EXPANDING SOCIAL NETWORK.- 15. Reproductive strategies and infant care in the Malagasy primates.- 16. When dads help: male behavioral care during primate infant development.- 17. Ontogeny of social behavior in the genus Cebus and the application of an integrative framework for examining plasticity and complexity in evolution.- VI. TRANSITIONS TO JUVENILITY AND REPRODUCTIVE MATURITY.- 18. Identifying proximate and ultimate causation in the development of primate sex-typed social behavior.- 19. Future adults or old children? Integrating life history frameworks for understanding primate positional patterns.- 20. Quantitative genetic perspectives female macaque life histories: heritability, plasticity, and trade-offs.- 21. Cultural evolution and human reproductive behavior.- CONCLUSION 22. The ontogeny of investigating primate ontogeny.