Doctoral Dissertation Research: Climbing Performance in African Apes

与现存的类人猿相比，人类的手臂相对较短，腿相对较长，这在功能上与我们独特的两条腿步态(两足行走)和地面生活有关。为了更好地理解原始人的运动进化，研究人员想知道两足动物何时以及如何影响原始人流动性的其他方面。在这个论文项目中，这位学生将比较人类、黑猩猩和大猩猩的攀登能力，以了解不同的身体尺寸和肢体比例如何影响攀登能力。这项研究对理解人类的进化、运动和力学具有广泛的意义。更多地了解攀岩运动还可以解决如何限制攀岩伤害、评估风险以及为运动和军事攀岩活动设计技术。该项目还将支持研究生培训，以及对STEM领域中代表性不足的群体以及当地社区和运动员的科学宣传。这项研究的目的是通过评估攀爬性能的三个方面：能量消耗、疲劳和树冠通道，来确定肢体比例和身体大小对人类、黑猩猩和大猩猩攀登性能的影响。Co-Pi将收集刚果共和国努阿巴勒-恩多基国家公园的同域人类、黑猩猩和大猩猩种群以及人类攀岩者的行为运动数据，以控制环境变化并观察一系列大小和比例的变化。人类是否在树上生存，以及在多大程度上是树栖动物，仍然存在争议，更具体地说，垂直攀登在各种人类分类群的运动能力中的相对重要性仍然是一个问题。这项研究将有助于更全面地理解攀岩的形式/功能关系，并能够评估在人类进化过程中，两足动物适应能力的选择如何影响攀岩能力。它还可能改善对化石类群生态的评估。

Compared to the living apes, humans are notably different in having relatively short arms and long legs, which is functionally related to our unique, two-legged gait (bipedalism) and life on the ground. To better understand hominin locomotor evolution, researchers want to know when and how bipedalism affected other aspects of hominin mobility. In this dissertation project, the student co-PI will compare aspects of climbing performance in humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas to see how a range of body sizes and limb proportions affects climbing ability. The research has broad implications for understanding human evolution, movement and mechanics. Understanding more about climbing performance can also address how to limit climbing injuries, assess risk, and design technology for both sport and military climbing pursuits. This project will also support graduate student training, and science outreach to groups underrepresented in STEM fields and to local communities and athletes. The objective of this study is to establish the effects of limb proportions and body size on the climbing performance of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas by assessing three aspects of climbing performance: energetic cost, fatigue, and canopy access. The co-PI will collect behavioral locomotor data in sympatric human, chimpanzee, and gorilla populations in Nouabale-Ndoki National Park, Republic of Congo, and in human rock climbers, to control for environmental variation and observe a range of size and proportion variation. Whether, and to what extent, hominins were arboreal continues to be debated, and, more specifically, the relative prominence of vertical climbing in the locomotor repertoires of various hominin taxa remains an issue. This study will result in a more comprehensive understanding of the form/function relationship for climbing, and enable the assessment of how selection for bipedal adaptations affected climbing abilities during human evolution. It may also improve assessments of the ecology of fossil taxa.