Relationship Among Demographic, Social and Genetic Structure

本研究对非人灵长类动物自然种群中个体行为、社会结构和遗传结构之间的双向相互关系进行了表征和检验。PI及其同事对草原狒狒（Papio cynocephalus）的研究种群进行了20多年的研究。我们阐明行为在提供生物体对可变条件的即时反应中的作用，并通过确定发育和基因表达发生的背景来塑造未来。因此，行为在很大程度上决定了受选择支配的表型。遗传分析将确定大多数行为和人口统计数据可用的个体对之间的亲缘关系。这些数据将与PI最近开发的数据库结合起来，以便分析有关形式的行为和人口数据。有待检验的假设涉及(1)几种类型的个体和成对行为（交配、竞争和附属）之间的关系，(2)这些较低水平的行为过程与群体水平的行为过程（统治等级、梳理网络）和人口统计过程（群体的裂变和人口结构）之间的关系，以及(3)成对和群体水平的过程与社会群体内遗传结构的关系。这些关系是灵长类动物社会生态学和行为进化模型的核心。

This research characterizes and tests hypotheses regarding the bidirectional inter-relationships among individual behavior, social structure, and genetic structure in a natural population of non-human primates. The study population of savannah baboons, Papio cynocephalus, has been under study by PI and colleagues for over two decades. We elucidate the role of behavior in providing the organism's immediate response to variable conditions, and in shaping the future through determining the context within which development and gene expression occur. Behavior thereby determines , to great extent, the phenotype that is subject to selection. Genetic analyses will identify relatedness among pairs of individuals for most of whom behavioral and demographic data are available. These will be integrated with PI's recently developed database, permitting analyses of related forms of behavioral and demographic data. Hypotheses to be tested address (1) the relationships among several types of individual and pairwise behaviors (mating, agonistic, and affiliative), (2) the relationships of these lower-level behavioral processes to group-level behavioral processes (dominance hierarchies, grooming networks), and demographic processes (fission and demographic structure of groups), and (3) the relationships of the pairwise and group-level processes to genetic structure within social groups. These relationships are at the core of models of primate socio-ecology and the evolution of behavior.