The Biomechanics of Specific Locomotion used by Our Closest Living Primate Relatives

社会、行为和经济科学局提供博士后研究奖学金，为新近毕业的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科生和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家引导他们的研究努力跨越传统的学科界限，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这一博士后奖学金支持一位在人类进化、生物力学、进化建模和灵长类动物学等几个科学领域的新兴学者研究一种特殊类型的运动(也称为指关节行走)的起源，这种运动只由我们现存的灵长类近亲黑猩猩和大猩猩使用，可能已经被我们的最早的祖先使用。这种奇怪的运动形式导致了数十年的研究，重点是为什么动物会在任何其他形式的运动中指节行走，以及它是什么时候进化的，进化了多少次。然而，解决关于指关节行走起源的任何假说的关键是基本数据，这些数据使研究人员能够理解它是如何工作的。通过充分了解指关节行走的工作原理，项目组将能够直接调查类人猿指关节行走的起源和进化。这将使该团队能够推断它在化石类人猿以及人类和黑猩猩的最后共同祖先中的存在。该项目与卢旺达的科学家和学生进行了大量合作，不仅是进行田野调查和数据收集，还进行了更深入的研究。研究小组将接待卢旺达大学生实习，以及在卡里索克研究中心进行高级研究的学生。该项目还促进了接触卢旺达本科生和早期职业科学家的机会。通过这种类型的国际合作，美国科学家、博士后学者和学生参与了有意义的研究，以推动人类学和生物力学领域的最新发展。在这个项目中，一个科学家团队利用最先进的实验室和现场生物力学分析黑猩猩、大猩猩和猕猴的运动，以及系统发育比较方法，以测试关于这种独特运动形式进化的假设，并了解这种运动行为是如何、何时和多少次进化的。具体地说，在这个项目中，科学家团队将：1)对黑猩猩的关节行走和猕猴的数字化/掌上行走进行3D联合水平的机械分析；2)创建一个计算模型，允许检验关节行走相对于其他形式的陆地运动的好处；3)使用进化建模来跟踪类人猿生命树中关节行走的进化，并推断其在化石猿中的存在；以及4)开发协议，从野生、极度濒危的山地大猩猩那里收集非侵入性的3-D运动学数据，包括关节行走。这项研究的更广泛影响将针对科学和教育领域。研究人员将制定协议，研究野生、极度濒危的山地大猩猩的活动情况。这不仅将为大猩猩的运动提供前所未有的见解，而且这些协议将广泛适用于其他濒危物种。此外，该项目将支持一名早期职业科学家的研究，并将包括指导研究生和本科生。通过培训下一代科学家并创建免费可用的数据资源和研究协议，该项目将促进对我们最接近的现存类人猿亲属起源的发现，以及我们自己物种的起源，远远超出了目前的项目。该项目涉及多个层面的国际合作，由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar at the intersection of several fields of science: Human Evolution, Biomechanics, Evolutionary Modeling and Primatology to investigate the origins of the peculiar type of locomotion (also called knuckle-walking) that is used only by our closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas, and may have been used by our earliest ancestors. This bizarre form of locomotion has led to decades of research focusing on why an animal would knuckle-walk over any other form of locomotion, and when and how many times it has evolved. However, critical to addressing any hypotheses concerning the origin of knuckle-walking are basic data that allow the Fellow to understand how it works. By fully understanding how knucklewalking works, the project team will be able to directly investigate the origin and evolution of knucklewalking in apes. This will enable the team to infer its presence in fossil apes as well as the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The project has substantial collaboration with scientists and students in Rwanda, going much deeper beyond simply doing fieldwork and data collection. The research team will host Rwandan university students for internships, and students conducting their senior research at the Karisoke Research Center. This project also facilitates opportunities to engage Rwandan undergraduate students and early career scientists. Through this type of international collaboration, US scientists, postdoctoral scholars and students engage in meaningful research to advance the state of the art in the field of anthropology and biomechanics.In this project, a team of scientists utilize state-of-the-art laboratory- and field-based biomechanical analyses of locomotion in chimpanzees, gorillas, and macaques, as well as phylogenetic comparative methodologies in order to test assumptions about the evolution of this unique form of locomotion, and to understand how, when, and how many times this locomotor behavior evolved. Specifically, in this project the team of scientists will: 1) perform a 3-D jointlevel mechanical analysis of knuckle-walking in chimpanzees and digitigrade/palmigrade walking in macaques, 2) create a computational model that allows for examination of the benefits of knuckle-walking over other forms of terrestrial locomotion, 3) use evolutionary modeling to track the evolution of knuckle-walking in the hominoid tree of life and to infer its presence in fossil apes, and 4) develop protocols for collecting non-invasive 3-D field kinematic data from wild, critically endangered mountain gorillas, including knuckle-walking. The broader impacts of this research will target both scientific and educational domains. The researchers will develop protocols to investigate locomotion in wild, critically endangered mountain gorillas. This will not only provide never-before-seen insights into gorilla locomotion, but the protocols will be widely applicable to other endangered species. Moreover, this project will support the research of an early-career scientist, and will involve mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students. By training the next generation of scientists and creating freely-available data resources and research protocols, this project will facilitate discoveries about the origin of our closest living ape relatives, as well as the origin of our own species, that go far beyond the present project. The project involves international collaboration at multiple levels, and is co-funded by the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.