Doctoral Dissertation Research: Comparison of arboreal locomotion in ecologically distinct primate populations

动物物种的骨骼解剖学通常与其运动和行为模式及其栖息地有关。了解形态、功能和环境之间的复杂关系对于重建过去物种的行为和栖息地至关重要。这个博士论文项目将调查野生山地大猩猩生活在生态上不同的栖息地如何可能在他们的运动模式（运动行为）不同。这一信息将有助于将猿类中可观察到的骨骼变化置于背景中，并为我们关于化石猿类和人类运动的推断提供信息。该项目将涉及跨学科和国际合作，扩大STEM中代表性不足群体的参与，并为本科生提供研究指导。研究人员将与公众讨论与人类进化和我们最近的近亲非洲猿有关的话题。古人类学家长期以来一直在争论我们的早期祖先是如何移动的，特别是他们如何开始用两条腿直立行走，以及他们可能在树上度过了多少时间。虽然更多的化石和更多的物种已经被添加到人类家族树中，但对于密切相关的物种和种群在栖息地和运动方面可能存在的差异仍然知之甚少。关于现存猿类种群运动的数据可以促进我们对运动行为和骨骼特征之间的形式-功能关系的理解，从而从猿类和人类化石记录中做出更明智的推断。研究人员将调查两个山地大猩猩种群的运动行为如何不同，主要运动行为的频率以及肢体和关节运动。该研究将使用传统的观察方法来量化不同姿势和运动行为的相对频率，并将运动行为的频率（例如，垂直攀爬和树枝下悬挂）与其他类人猿相比。基于视频的运动分析（运动学）将实施新的基于场的方法来捕获运动数据，提供自然环境中猿类的第一批3D运动学数据。运动学分析将量化运动过程中使用的关节姿势和运动，为解释骨骼特征的功能作用提供新的定量数据，这些骨骼特征通常用于推断运动能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The skeletal anatomy of an animal species is generally related to its patterns of movement and behavior and to its habitat. Understanding the complex relationships between form, function, and environment is essential for reconstructing the behaviors and habitats of past species. This doctoral dissertation project will investigate how populations of wild mountain gorillas living in ecologically distinct habitats may differ in their patterns of movement (locomotor behavior). This information will help contextualize the observable skeletal variation in apes and inform our inferences about locomotion in fossil apes and humans. The project will involve interdisciplinary and international collaborations, broaden the participation of under-represented groups in STEM, and provide research mentorship to undergraduate students. The researchers will engage with the public on topics related to human evolution and our closest living relatives, the African apes.Paleoanthropologists have long debated how our early ancestors moved, especially in terms of how they first began walking upright on two legs, and how much time they may have spent in the trees. While more fossils, and more species, have been added to the hominin family tree, there is still limited knowledge about how closely related species and populations may have differed in terms of habitats and locomotion. Data on the locomotion of living ape populations can advance our understanding of the form-function relationships between locomotor behavior and skeletal features, allowing more informed inferences from the ape and human fossil record. The researchers will investigate how the locomotor behavior of two populations of mountain gorillas differs, in terms of the frequency of key locomotor behaviors and limb and joint motions. The study will use traditional observational methods to quantify the relative frequency of different postural and locomotor behaviors, and place into context the frequency of locomotor behaviors (e.g., vertical climbing and below-branch suspension) in comparison to other great apes. The video-based motion analysis (kinematics) will implement new field-based methods for capturing motion data, providing some of the first 3D kinematic data on apes in their natural environment. Kinematic analysis will quantify the joint postures and movements used during locomotion, offering new quantitative data for interpreting the functional role of skeletal features often used to infer locomotor capabilities.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.