Collaborative Research: Life in a Changing Environment

合作研究：不断变化的环境中的生活

• 批准号: 0323553
• 负责人: Susan Alberts
• 金额: $ 108.4万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-08-01 至 2009-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0323553&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Life; Changing; Environment

Environmental change is a cornerstone of major theories of human origins. Adaptation to environmental variability--seasonal, random, and directional over decades--is also a key feature of savanna baboons, a large, widespread species of non-human primates that shares many features with humans. The current investigations will focus on the baboon population of Amboseli, a population that has experienced extensive environmental change over the past several decades for which information is available, and that has persisted in the face of this environmental change. Behavior, the centerpiece of the current investigations, plays a pivotal role in adaptation to environmental variability. It has both immediate, short-term consequences for maintaining internal stability and profound long-term consequences for the lives of individuals and for the evolutionary trajectories of populationsThe current project will evaluate and test predictions about behavioral and physiological consequences of environmental change, and about the effects of environmental change on birth and death rates. Estimates of gene flow patterns in the study population will also be developed using newly applied statistical methods in combination with genetic markers. By incorporating demographic, behavioral, environmental, genetic, and hormonal data in an integrative framework, the work will serve several specific goals. (1) It will provide detailed information on how environmental change affects fitness components and related traits. (2) It will elucidate the extent to which individuals are differentially affected by, and respond to, environmental change. This will provide important insight into traits that confer an adaptive advantage in the face of environmental change. (3) It will provide important information on the impact of short time-scale environmental change, and on the population structure of a species experiencing such change. (4) It will provide vital data on how organisms adapt to environmental change. This is highly relevant for biological conservation in the current period of rapid, anthropogenic climate change. This project is, of necessity and design, intrinsically interdisciplinary. It will both utilize and enhance integration of concepts, data, and techniques across a range of social and biological sciences. This project will greatly expand the investigators' long history of training American and Kenyan students-training activities that are intimately connected with the research goals. Recent human resource development has focused on training for 6 post-doctoral fellows, 7 Ph.D. candidates (2 of them Kenyan), 3 M.Sc. students (2 of them Kenyan), 24 undergraduates (including 5 African-Americans and 3 Hispanic women), and 1 high school student. The investigators also actively collaborate with 4 Kenyan scientists and are working with them on relevant in-country capacity-building activities. Proposed exchange visits and a working group meeting in Kenya will further advance these goals and lay an even more solid base for enduring impact. The project will also extend the investigators' activities toward enhancement of infrastructure and dissemination of results. The PIs are among the first to refine and apply non-invasive techniques for obtaining and utilizing genetic and hormonal samples, techniques that are of increasing importance worldwide for ethical, scientific, and regulatory reasons. In addition, a major task of the investigators in the past few years has been to design and implement a comprehensive database that includes the many diverse data sets associated with the long-term baboon project. The database design has been shared with a number of other scientists upon request. In addition, a website has been developed for their field research project (www.princeton.edu/~baboon), which serves as a vehicle for providing information and data to the public, students from K through post-graduate, and colleagues.

环境变化是人类起源主要理论的基石。适应了数十年来的环境变异性 - 季节，随机和方向性 - 也是Savanna Baboons的关键特征，Savanna Baboons是一种大型，广泛的非人类灵长类动物，它与人类具有许多特征。当前的调查将集中于Amboseli的狒狒人口，该人口在过去的几十年中经历了广泛的环境变化，并在这种环境变化时一直持续存在。当前研究的核心行为是适应环境变异性的关键作用。它对维持内部稳定性和对个人的生活以及人口的进化轨迹的长期后果既有直接的短期后果，目前的项目将评估和测试有关环境变化的行为和生理后果的预测，以及环境变化对出生和死亡率的影响。研究人群中基因流量模式的估计还将使用新应用的统计方法与遗传标记结合开发。通过将人口，行为，环境，遗传和荷尔蒙数据纳入整合框架，该工作将实现多个特定目标。 （1）它将提供有关环境变化如何影响健身组成部分和相关特征的详细信息。 （2）它将阐明个人在多大程度上受环境变化的影响并响应的程度。这将提供对面对环境变化的适应性优势的特征的重要见解。 （3）它将提供有关短期环境变化以及经历这种变化的物种的种群结构的影响的重要信息。 （4）它将提供有关生物如何适应环境变化的重要数据。这与当前快速的人为气候变化时期的生物保护高度相关。这个项目是必要的，是本质上跨学科的。它既将利用并增强各种社会和生物科学的概念，数据和技术的整合。该项目将大大扩大调查人员的悠久培训美国和肯尼亚学生培训活动的悠久历史，这些活动与研究目标紧密相关。最近的人力资源开发集中于6名博士学位的6名博士后研究员的培训。候选人（其中2个肯尼亚人），3 M.Sc.学生（其中2名肯尼亚人），24名大学生（包括5名非裔美国人和3名西班牙裔妇女）和1名高中生。研究人员还与4位肯尼亚科学家积极合作，并正在与他们合作进行相关的国内能力建设活动。拟议的交流访问和在肯尼亚举行的工作组会议将进一步促进这些目标，并为持久影响提供更坚实的基础。该项目还将扩展研究人员对增强基础设施和结果传播的活动。 PI是首批改善和应用非侵入性技术来获取和利用遗传和荷尔蒙样品，这是全世界在全球范围内越来越重要的道德，科学和法规原因的技术。此外，在过去几年中，调查人员的一项主要任务是设计和实施一个全面的数据库，其中包括与长期狒狒项目相关的许多不同数据集。根据要求，数据库设计已与许多其他科学家共享。此外，还为其实地研究项目（www.princeton.edu/~baboon）开发了一个网站，该网站是向公众提供信息和数据的工具，来自K的学生到研究生，以及同事。