CAREER: Social Behavior and Genetics in a Fission-Fusion Society of African Elephants

职业生涯：核聚变社会中的社会行为和遗传学。苏珊·C·阿尔伯特这个拟议的项目聚焦于非洲象的野生种群，将使用行为数据和遗传技术来测试有关社会行为进化的关键假设。这些假说涉及(1)雄性交配成功率差异的原因，(2)近亲交配避免的程度和机制，(3)社会关系在多大程度上由亲属关系决定，(4)行为对种群遗传结构的影响。这一建议中涉及的问题对于理解社会行为的进化具有普遍重要性，对于理解受威胁物种种群中经过充分研究的行为和基因之间的关系尤其重要。这项工作将涉及肯尼亚安博塞利国家公园的非洲象种群，自1974年以来，该公园一直是行为和人口统计学研究的对象。像许多群居哺乳动物一样，大象在雌性亲属之间表现出长期的联系，交配行为有利于一类在社会上占主导地位的雄性。然而，与大多数哺乳动物不同的是，大象表现出一种非常不稳定的裂变-融合社会形式，在给定的一年里，一头大象可能会与种群中的几乎每一名成员联系在一起。这就提出了一些独特的问题，如近亲交配的避免，亲属之间不可预测的相遇，在不稳定的社会环境中的合作，以及在流动的社会内部和之间的遗传分化和基因流动。该项目的遗传部分将包括大规模的微卫星分析和线粒体DNA研究，重点是400个个体。这些遗传数据将被用来确定(1)一组小牛犊的父子关系，(2)繁殖雌性和雄性之间的亲缘关系水平，(3)在重点家庭中雌性之间的遗传亲缘关系水平，以及(4)母系和父系亲属网络在家庭内部和家庭之间的分布。该项目的教育部分包括研究生和本科课程的发展，以及为达勒姆地区高中生物教师举办讲习班，他们表示迫切需要在课堂上增加课程内容。达勒姆地区的公立学校有很高的少数民族入学率(60%)，并且坚定地致力于科学教育，包括进化论的教学。研讨会的目的是提供行为生态学的课程内容，并利用这一子学科的强大吸引力，以增加达勒姆不同学生群体对基础生物学研究的兴趣。

CAREER: Social behavior and genetics in a fission-fusion society. Susan C. AlbertsFocusing on a wild population of African elephants, the proposed project will test critical hypotheses about the evolution of social behavior, using both behavioral data and genetic techniques. These hypotheses address (1) the causes of differences in mating success among males, (2) the extent and mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance, (3) the extent to which social relationships are determined by kinship, and (4) the impact of behavior on the genetic structure of populations. The questions addressed in this proposal are of both general importance for understanding the evolution of social behavior, and of particular importance for understanding the relationship between behavior and genes in a well-studied population of a threatened species. The work will involve the African elephant population in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, which has been the subject of ongoing behavioral and demographic studies since 1974. Elephants, like many social mammals, exhibit long-term associations among female relatives, and mating behavior that favors a class of socially dominant males. However, unlike most mammals, elephants exhibit a very fluid form of fission-fusion society, in which an individual elephant may associate with almost every member of the population in a given year. This raises unique questions about inbreeding avoidance where relatives encounter each other unpredictably, about cooperation in unstable social settings, and about genetic differentiation and gene flow within and between fluid societies. The genetic component of the project will include a large-scale microsatellite analysis and a study of mitochondrial DNA, focusing on 400 individuals. These genetic data will be used to establish (1) paternity for a subset of calves, (2) levels of relatedness between breeding females and males, (3) levels of genetic relatedness between females in focal families, and (4) the distribution of maternal and paternal kin networks within and across families. The educational component of the project includes graduate and undergraduate course development, as well as the development of a workshop for Durham area high school biology teachers, who have expressed a pressing need for additional course content for their classrooms. Durham area public schools have a high (60%) minority enrollment as well as a strong commitment to science education, including the teaching of evolution. The workshop aims to provide course content in behavioral ecology, and to capitalize on the strong popular appeal of this sub-discipline in order to increase interest in basic biological research among Durham's diverse student population.