Female Sociality, Dispersal, and Comparative Microbial Community Composition in Pan troglodytes

研究集中在人类物种和许多其他灵长类动物特殊的社会性特征上，已经证明了强大的社会纽带具有明显的适应性好处。这些积极的好处包括增加健康、长寿和生殖成功，以及相关的压力减轻、增强的韧性和增强的社会学习。强大社会关系的多重和至关重要的好处表明，在这些适应性后果的背后存在着进化的机制。然而，在像我们这样特别长寿的物种中发现的复杂、多层次的社会中，很难破译发育起源的核心方面，以及解释高度社会化的女性一生中保持联系的机制。因此，这项研究将在灵长类动物模型中研究雌性社会关系的发育和纵向方面，即野生黑猩猩，这是人类现存的最接近的亲戚。这些灵长类动物在一生中也是长寿的，短暂的，以复杂结构的社会和关系为特征，雌性在其出生的社区中发展出牢固的附属关系和优先关系，然后在成年后移民到新的社区并在这种情况下形成社会关系。利用一种独特的研究设计，利用微生物群签名指示女性在出生和成年社区之间的运动，以及与社会纽带相关的遗传、行为和荷尔蒙数据，该项目将绕过对这种高度社会性女性的研究限制，并允许解决与理解社会关系、健康和幸福之间的关系相关的假设。这项跨学科的协作研究应用了明显的基于变革性微生物群和常染色体基因的分析与行为和内分泌研究，以解释女性移民的模式以及女性纽带的基础、益处和在她们一生中持续存在的基础。具体地说，这项研究将对1000多只野生雌性黑猩猩进行下一代、直接DNA微生物和常染色体测序，以确定出生群落的起源、迁徙模式以及雌性社会性和关系的纵向视角。为了检验女性社会关系是适应性的这一假设，这项研究将对一部分习惯性女性进行激素分析(皮质醇，一种压力标记，以及催产素，一种亲密关系的标记)。这个自然实验室可以检查微生物变异与宿主遗传学、生物地理学和亲缘关系(亲缘关系)之间的关系，这将有助于理解推动社会关系、宿主-微生物多样性和相关健康后果的因素。通过研究产生的广泛和多样化的数据集将被广泛传播，促进未来在多个科学领域的研究。相关培训和合作将侧重于美国和国际合作者和学生，从而增强研究能力。由于作为模式研究物种的野生灵长类动物濒临灭绝，微生物群和扩散模式数据将被应用于促进该物种的健康和为保护政策提供信息，特别是在日益分散的栖息地。

Research focused on the exceptional degree of sociality characterizing the human species and many of the other primates has demonstrated clear, adaptive benefits to strong social bonds. These positive benefits include increased health, longevity, and reproductive success, as well as associated reductions in stress, increased resilience, and enhanced social learning. Such multiple and critically important benefits of strong social relationships suggest that there are evolved mechanisms underlying these adaptive consequences. Deciphering the core aspects of developmental origins and the mechanisms accounting for persistence of bonds throughout the lifetime of highly social females, however, is difficult in the complex, multilayered societies found in exceptionally long-lived species such as our own. This research therefore will examine the developmental and longitudinal aspects of female social bonds in a primate model, that of wild chimpanzees, the closest living relatives of humans. These primates also are long-lived, transient during their lifetimes, and characterized by complexly structured societies and relationships, with females developing strong affiliative and preferential bonds in their natal communities, before emigrating to new communities as adults and forming social relationships in this context. Utilizing a unique research design employing microbiome signatures indicative of female movements between their natal and adult communities, as well as genetic, behavioral, and hormonal data related to social bonding, the project will circumvent research limitations for such highly social females and permit addressing hypotheses relevant to understanding the relationships between social bonds, health and well-being.This interdisciplinary, collaborative research applies distinctly transformative microbiome and autosomal genotype-based analyses with behavioral and endocrinological studies to explain patterns of female immigration and the basis for, benefits of, and persistence of female bonds through their lifespan. Specifically, this study will conduct next generation, direct-DNA microbial and autosomal sequencing of over 1000 wild female chimpanzees to determine natal community origins, immigration patterns, and longitudinal perspectives of female sociality and relationships. To test the hypothesis that female social relationships are adaptive, the research will apply hormone analyses (cortisol, a stress marker, and oxytocin, a marker for bonding) to a subset of habituated females. This natural laboratory permits examination of the relationships between microbial variation and host genetics, biogeography, and relatedness (kinship), which will contribute to understanding the factors driving social relationships, host-microbial diversity, and associated health consequences.The expansive and diverse datasets generated through the research will be broadly disseminated, facilitating future research in multiple scientific areas. Associated training and collaboration will focus on both US and international collaborators and students, thereby enhancing research capacity. And as the wild primates serving as the model study species are critically endangered, the microbiome and dispersal patterns data will find application in promoting the health of the species and informing conservation policy, particularly in increasingly fragmented habitats.