OPUS: PRAIRIE DOG SOCIETIES: SYNTHESIS OF 45 YEARS OF RESEARCH ON BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY

本项目将综合研究四种草原土拨鼠的生态和社会行为。重点将是三个因素，不仅影响草原犬鼠，也影响其他数百种脊椎动物的社会物种：非亲代杀婴，报警，和一妻多夫制（一个雌性与两个或两个以上的雄性交配）。综合将研究这些因素如何影响草原土拨鼠群体中社会生活的成本和收益。这项研究将产生两种成果：一种是向广大科学读者展示综合成果的书，另一种是面向高中生、本科生和其他各年龄段好奇的博物学家的网站，其中包含数十年的图像、录音、视频和数据集。最后，研究人员将继续与包括国家地理电视台在内的四家电视公司合作，这些公司最近记录了他对草原土拨鼠的研究。这项研究提供了对哺乳动物常见但鲜为人知的社会行为进化的见解；这些产品将引起行为生态学家、野生动物管理者和保护生物学家的广泛兴趣。群居物种最初表现出一些令人费解的行为，这个项目旨在收集草原土拨鼠物种40年来的数据，以了解三种这样的行为：非亲代杀婴、报警和一妻多夫制。从表面上看，这些行为似乎都不利于健康，因此需要集中调查才能理解。该项目将利用长期数据跟踪个体在其一生中的行为和繁殖成功来理解这些现象。特别是，综合将包括新的分析，集中在群体密度对杀婴频率的作用，发出警报的个体的成本和收益，这可能会引起捕食者的注意，以及雌性多次交配的成本和收益。这将是第一个阐明这些行为在一生中的一致性和偶然性及其对健康的影响的研究。这些分析将澄清尽管有这些明显的代价，殖民主义的维持。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will synthesize research on the ecology and social behavior of four species of prairie dogs. The focus will be three factors that affect not only prairie dogs, but also hundreds of other vertebrate social species: non-parental infanticide, alarm calling, and polyandry (a single female mating with two or more males). The synthesis will examine how these factors have influenced the costs and benefits of social life within prairie dog colonies. Two products of the research will result: a book that will present the synthesis to a wide scientific audience and a website featuring decades of images, audio recordings, videos, and datasets directed at high school students, undergraduates, and other curious naturalists of all ages. Finally, the researcher will continue to collaborate with four television companies - including National Geographic Television - that have recently documented his research with prairie dogs. This research provides insights into the evolution of common, but poorly understood, social behaviors in mammals; the products will be of broad interest to behavioral ecologists, wildlife managers, and conservation biologists.Social species exhibit several initially puzzling behaviors, and this project aims to pull together four decades of data on prairie dog species to understand three such behaviors: non-parental infanticide, alarm calling, and polyandry. Each of these behaviors seems detrimental to fitness on the surface and hence requires focused investigation to understand. This project will leverage long term data following the behavior of individuals over their lifetime and their reproductive success to understand these phenomena. In particular, the synthesis will include new analyses focused on the role of colony density on the frequency of infanticide, the costs and benefits to an individual that gives an alarm call, which may draw a predator's attention, and the costs and benefits of multiple matings by females. This will be the first study to elucidate the consistency and contingency of these behaviors over a life time and the consequences for fitness. The analyses will clarify the maintenance of coloniality despite these apparent costs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.