CSBR: Living Stocks: Support of the Duke Lemur Center for the Study of Primate Biology and History

该奖项将部分支持狐猴公爵中心(DLC)的运营。DLC是世界上最濒危和生物多样性最大的灵长类动物--马达加斯加狐猴--的独特活体种群。这个群体是50多年来圈养繁殖、机构交流和最初在野外捕获动物的产物。狐猴是马达加斯加生物多样性热点地区独有的物种，由于它们处于极度濒危状态，不是一种可再生资源。DLC是所有年龄段和学术水平的学生的特殊培训场所。在其50年的历史中，从K-12到研究生水平的数千名学生参与了DLC的工作，并受到他们的经验的启发。此外，数十万来自普通公众的参观者通过接触DLC的工作人员、学生和藏品，接触到了生物多样性发现和保护的概念，以及生物研究的力量。DLC是一个促进跨学科研究、学术和生物保护的活实验室，涵盖从行为生态学到脑科学、进化生态学、微生物基因组学、比较基因组学、生物力学、One Health疾病动力学、老龄化和人口学、生物多样性保护、古生物学、气候变化、比较生理学、物种形成遗传学、感觉生物学等生物学学科。该奖项将帮助DLC实现其短期和长期目标，其中包括改善对本科生研究项目的支持，参与维护和加强物种和遗传多样性的交流和贷款协议，以及利用新技术来改善涉及狐猴的比较生物学研究。该项目将支持的研究和群体护理计划由一个专门的专业团队监督，他们总共代表五个博士、三个硕士学位、两个DVM，以及200多年在狐猴研究、健康、畜牧业、保护和圈养管理方面的直接经验。DLC是世界上唯一一个研究人员可以随时获得狐猴的地方，那里有生物样本、数十年的医疗记录、已灭绝分类群的化石代表和丰富的生活史，可以进行比较研究。可在线获取种群清单、人口统计数据、元数据和研究机会(lemur.duke.edu)。DLC服务于多个教育社区，包括普通公众、K-12、本科生、研究生和研究生。对于K-12学生，活动包括夏令营和各种课堂学习和互动活动，通过在线教育推广工具更多地参与远程学习。兽医系还通过本科生勤工俭学和兽医学生培训等方式支持教育活动。最重要的是，DLC致力于通过迁地圈养管理和广泛的基于社区的马达加斯加计划来开展保护活动。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award will partially support operations of the Duke Lemur Center (DLC). The DLC is a unique living stock collection of the world's most endangered and biologically diverse primates, the lemurs of Madagascar. The colony is the product of more than 50 years of captive breeding, institutional exchange, and initially, animals caught in the wild. Lemurs are unique to the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar, and due to their critically-endangered status, are not a renewable resource. The DLC is an exceptional training ground for students across all ages and academic levels. Over its 50-year history, thousands of students ranging from K-12 through postgraduate levels have been engaged in and inspired by their experiences at the DLC. Also, hundreds of thousands of visitors from the general public have been exposed to the concepts of biodiversity discovery and conservation, as well as the power of biological research via their exposure to the DLC's staff, students, and collections. The DLC serves as a living laboratory for advancing interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and biological conservation, covering biological disciplines ranging from behavioral ecology to brain sciences, evolutionary ecology, microbial metagenomics, comparative genomics, biomechanics, One Health disease dynamics, aging and demography, biodiversity conservation, paleontology, climate change, comparative physiology, speciation genetics, sensory biology, and more. The award will help the DLC meet its short and long-term goals, which include improving support for undergraduate research projects, engaging in exchanges and loan agreements to maintain and enhance species and genetic diversity, and harnessing new technologies to improve comparative biological research involving lemurs. The research and colony-care programs that will be supported by this project have oversight from a dedicated team of professionals who collectively represent five PhDs, three Masters degrees, two DVMs, and additively, more than two hundred years of direct experience with lemur research, health, husbandry, conservation, and captive management. The DLC is the only place in the world where lemurs are readily available to investigators, and where biological samples, decades of medical records, fossil representatives of extinct taxa, and rich life-history are available for comparative studies. Access to colony inventories, demographics, metadata and research opportunities is available on-line (lemur.duke.edu). The DLC serves multiple educational communities, including the general public, K-12, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students. For K-12 students, activities include summer camps and a variety of classroom learning and interactive activities with increasing engagement in long-distance learning through on-line tools for educational outreach. The veterinary department also supports educational activities via undergraduate work-study opportunities and veterinary student training. Critically, the DLC is committed to conservation activities via both ex situ captive management and extensive community-based Madagascar programs.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.