Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on primate movement patterns and dispersal

在过去的几千年里，人类向热带森林的扩张，以及与之相关的景观转变为森林、农业和城市栖息地的拼凑，对灵长类动物的数量产生了负面影响，并导致人类与野生非人类灵长类动物之间的直接冲突增加。然而，尽管有着悠久的接触历史，人类（人为）因素对灵长类动物进化轨迹的影响尚未完全了解。该项目将研究遗传碎片化的景观如何影响银棕色绢毛猴野生种群的基因流、遗传结构和功能连接性，绢毛猴是哥伦比亚北方马格达莱纳河流域一种有魅力的濒危灵长类动物。这项研究将加强美国和哥伦比亚研究人员之间的长期国际合作，并有助于加强研究人员，当地社区和国家环境公司之间的关系，这将进一步支持这种濒危灵长类动物的保护。它还将为女研究生和本科生提供研究、培训和指导机会，从而促进和吸引代表性不足的群体更多地参与STEM学科。绢毛猴是体型较小的猴子，世代时间相对较短，在它们的地理范围内，它们会受到持续的人为景观变化的影响。与此同时，它们表现出高度的流动性和在人类改造的栖息地中生存的能力，导致它们与人类共享空间，并使绢毛猴成为理解栖息地破碎化的进化后果的理想模型。利用下一代基因组技术，该项目将对数十种个体绢毛猴的核基因组中的数万个标记进行分类，以确定自然和人为因素如何共同塑造景观水平上的遗传变异模式。这将是野生灵长类动物种群结构的第一个基因组研究，也是第一个明确研究人类引起的栖息地变化的影响的研究。遗传数据和结果将通过科学期刊和报告传播，并将提供给环境机构，供今后采取保护行动之用。

Over the past several thousand years, human expansion into tropical forests and the associated transformation of landscapes into patchworks of forested, agricultural, and urban habitats has had a negative impact on primate populations and led to increases in direct conflict between humans and wild, nonhuman primates. However, despite this long history of contact, the influence of human (anthropogenic) factors on primate evolutionary trajectories is not fully understood. This project will examine how anthropogenically-fragmented landscapes affect gene flow, genetic structure, and functional connectivity among wild populations of the silvery-brown tamarin, a charismatic and endangered primate from the Rio Magdalena valley in northern Colombia. The study will strengthen long-term international collaborations between US and Colombian researchers and help bolster relationships between researchers, the local community, and the state environmental corporation, which will further support the conservation of this endangered primate. It will also provide research, training, and mentorship opportunities for a female graduate student and undergraduates, thereby promoting and engaging greater participation of underrepresented constituencies in STEM disciplines.Tamarins are small-bodied monkeys with relatively short generation times, and across their geographic range they are subject to ongoing anthropogenic landscape changes. At the same time, they show a high degree of mobility and ability to survive in human-modified habitats, resulting in their sharing space with humans and making tamarins ideal models for understanding the evolutionary consequences of habitat fragmentation. Using next-generation genomic techniques, this project will type tens of thousands of markers from across the nuclear genome for dozens of individual tamarins to determine how natural and anthropogenic factors together shape patterns of genetic variation at the landscape level. This will be one of the first genomic studies of population structure in wild primates and one of the first to explicitly examine the effects of human-induced habitat change. The genetic data and results will be disseminated through scientific journals and presentations and will be given to environmental agencies for future implementation of conservation actions.