Collaborative Research: Relationship Among Demographic, Social and Genetic Structure

这项研究对非人类灵长类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的假设进行了表征和测试。20多年来，Pi和他的同事们一直在研究稀树大草原的研究种群Papio cynocephalus。我们阐明了行为在提供有机体对可变条件的即时反应中的作用，以及通过确定发生发育和基因表达的背景来塑造未来的作用。因此，行为在很大程度上决定了受选择的表型。基因分析将确定一对个体之间的关联，其中大多数人的行为和人口统计数据是可用的。这些数据将与PI最近开发的数据库相结合，从而能够分析相关形式的行为和人口数据。被测试的假设涉及(1)几种类型的个人和配对行为(交配、竞争和从属)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(优势等级、梳理网络)和人口统计过程(群体的分裂和人口结构)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。这些关系是灵长类社会生态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.