Collaborative Research: Life in a Changing Environment

环境变化是人类起源主要理论的基石。适应环境变化——季节性、随机性和方向性——也是热带草原狒狒的一个关键特征。热带草原狒狒是一种大型、广泛分布的非人类灵长类动物，与人类有许多共同特征。目前的调查将集中在安博塞利的狒狒种群上，在过去的几十年里，这个种群经历了广泛的环境变化，并在这种环境变化面前持续存在。行为是当前研究的核心，在适应环境变化方面起着关键作用。它对维持内部稳定既有直接的、短期的影响，也对个人的生活和种群的进化轨迹有深远的长期影响。目前的项目将评估和检验有关环境变化对行为和生理后果的预测，以及环境变化对出生率和死亡率的影响。还将利用最新应用的统计方法与遗传标记相结合，对研究人群中的基因流动模式进行估计。通过将人口统计、行为、环境、遗传和激素数据整合到一个综合框架中，这项工作将服务于几个具体目标。(1)它将提供环境变化如何影响适应度成分和相关性状的详细信息。(2)阐明个体受环境变化影响和对环境变化作出反应的差异程度。这将为在面对环境变化时赋予适应优势的特征提供重要的见解。(3)为研究短时间尺度环境变化的影响以及经历这种变化的物种种群结构提供重要信息。它将提供生物体如何适应环境变化的重要数据。这对当前快速的人为气候变化时期的生物保护具有重要意义。这个项目的必要性和设计本质上是跨学科的。它将利用并加强跨一系列社会和生物科学的概念、数据和技术的整合。这个项目将极大地扩展研究人员训练美国和肯尼亚学生的悠久历史——训练活动与研究目标密切相关。最近的人力资源开发重点培养了6名博士后，7名博士研究生（2名肯尼亚人），3名硕士研究生（2名肯尼亚人），24名本科生（包括5名非洲裔美国人和3名西班牙裔女性）和1名高中生。调查人员还与4名肯尼亚科学家积极合作，并正在与他们合作开展相关的国内能力建设活动。拟议的互访和在肯尼亚举行的工作组会议将进一步推进这些目标，并为持久的影响奠定更加坚实的基础。该项目还将扩大调查人员的活动，以加强基础设施和传播结果。pi是第一批改进和应用非侵入性技术来获取和利用基因和激素样本的人之一，这些技术在全球范围内因伦理、科学和监管原因而日益重要。此外，在过去几年中，研究人员的一项主要任务是设计和实施一个综合数据库，其中包括与长期狒狒项目相关的许多不同数据集。数据库设计已应要求与其他一些科学家共享。此外，还为他们的实地研究项目开发了一个网站（www.princeton.edu/~baboon），作为向公众、从K到研究生的学生和同事提供信息和数据的工具。

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.