Relationship Among Demographic, Social and Genetic Structure

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Nontechnical Abstract Long term studies of primates in their natural environment are especially valuable. This project studies the interdependencies among behavior, ecology (especially life history and population size) , and genetic structure of natural groups. The empirical research focuses on several generations of individually identified baboons, Papio cynocephalus, that are monitored throughout their lifetimes in the Amboseli region of East Africa. This project will perfect the development of determining the genetic identity of individuals using DNA that is derived from feces as well as from blood. This will permit genetic sampling with a minimum of disturbance to the animals. Combining knowledge of genetic identity and known maternity will be used to determine genetic relatedness structure within and between groups and to test theories of the relationship between social interactions and kinship in a variable environment. Data on social dominance and affiliative relationships, demography, and general female reproductive condition are obtained observationally. Differences in fitness components will be estimated and the consequences of dominance status will be evaluated at conception, gestation, several stages of post-natal survival, and mating using the genetic, behavioral, and reproductive data. Genetic and social partitioning of the population arises both from male dispersal and fissioning of social groups into new, independent units. Genetic, social, and ecological (including demographic) causes and consequences of dispersal and fissioning are uniquely amenable to analysis in this study and provide insights relevant both to evolution and to conservation of fragmented populations. Therefore, this long term research promises to provide information that will be applicable to a wide variety of organisms over a range of situations.