Melissa S. Gerald is an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico-Medical Sciences Campus. Since 2001, she has directed the scientific research program on Cayo Santiago, an island off the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, populated with over 900 free-ranging rhesus macaques. She is broadly interested in primate mating behavior and mating-associated communication, with particular emphasis on the role of secondary sexual coloration. Her research is framed within sexual selection and communication theory and is largely informed by observations of animals across phylogenetic boundaries, including: tortoises, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes and humans. Her research combines an experimental approach with behavioral, genetic and physiological data collected on free-ranging monkeys. Dr. Gerald received her B.A. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Anthropology and Psychology, with Minor concentrations in Dance and French. She completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at UCLA and was a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the National Institutes of Health.