RAPID: Preservation of the Cayo Santiago macaque colony and post-storm behavioral and biological data in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria

在进化和现代背景下，极端和意想不到的环境变化给人类和我们的近亲灵长类动物带来了风险和机遇。该RAPID奖将用于支持飓风玛丽亚后波多黎各圣地亚哥岛的稳定工作和数据收集，以及生活在那里的自由放养的猴子群体。该项目在风暴过后的关键时期保存了重要的短期数据，此时植被和水资源有限，景观发生了变化，但海洋资源更为丰富。这些数据将允许测试一些关于严重环境变化对行为和生物学的假设。猴群已经被研究了79年，风暴前的数据包括行为、遗传学和形态学。这些数据为生物人类学、灵长类生态学、认知科学和相关医学领域的发展奠定了基础。重要的是，通过修复岛上的蓄水池和饲养畜栏，该RAPID将支持圣地亚哥群岛猕猴本身的保护。这种科学上必要的基础设施支持通过创造一种环境，使卡约工作人员和当地学生研究人员（所有这些人都是代表性不足的少数民族）能够继续他们的工作，从而提供社会效益。公众将通过与nsf资助的科学指导计划的合作伙伴关系获得研究成果。理解、建模和减轻严重变化对人类和非人类灵长类动物的影响的关键是将高质量的事件前数据、事件后即时数据和长期随访数据结合起来。研究人员将继续研究与严重环境和饮食扰动对个体可塑性和生存影响建模相关的几个关键问题。这些问题为深入研究过去（人类进化）提供了关键信息，也为未来事件的更好结果提供了前瞻性模型。飓风玛丽亚为测试严重的环境变化对行为和身体的影响提供了科学机会，正是因为圣地亚哥岛一直是长期行为研究的丰富和基础资源。精确已知谱系（谱系）的灵长类动物种群是罕见的，圣地亚哥群岛猕猴是自由放养的独特种群，有着悠久的历史记录和丰富的行为、遗传和解剖学研究项目。pi将收集数据（资源调查和同位素基线值，动物摄取值），用于评估风暴后的行为和被迫饮食变化的后果（从风暴后第一个时期对被冲刷的海洋资源的依赖，到更多的植被和供应），这些数据与人类进化的假设直接相关。通过每日人口普查和观察数据，他们将评估社会群体的生存和定位，以及对不断变化的景观（包括岛屿之间水下地峡的通道）的反应。这些数据将为未来的环境退化影响模型增加洞察力。收集这些数据的能力，以及正在进行和未来的长期研究，需要群体的生存。没有这里支持的即时干预，比较科学是不可能的，幸存者可能会死亡，从他们那里建立起来的长期科学进步将被终止。

Extreme and unexpected environmental changes have posed both risks and opportunities for humans and our close primate relatives, in both evolutionary and modern contexts. This RAPID award will support stabilization efforts and data collection in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria from the island of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico and the free-ranging monkey groups that live there. This project preserves important short-term data during a critical, immediate post-storm period when vegetation and water are limited, landscapes have been changed, but marine resources are more abundant. These data will allow the testing of several hypotheses regarding severe environmental change on behavior and biology. The monkey colony has been well-studied for 79 years, and pre-storm data integrating behavior, genetics and morphology are abundant. These data have been foundational for advances in biological anthropology, primate ecology, cognitive science, and related medical fields. Importantly, this RAPID will support preservation of the Cayo Santiago macaques themselves, by repairing the island water cisterns and feeding corrals. This scientifically necessary infrastructural support provides societal benefits by creating a context in which Cayo staff and local student researchers, all of whom are under-represented minorities, can continue their work. Public access to the research results will be provided through partnership with an NSF-funded science mentoring program.A key to understanding, modeling and mitigating the influence of severe change on humans and nonhuman primates is the combination of quality pre-event data, immediate post-event data, and long-term follow up data. The investigators will pursue several key research questions related to modeling the influence of severe environmental and dietary perturbation on individual plasticity and survival. These questions provide key information for studies in the deep past (human evolution) as well as prospective modelling for better outcomes in future events. Hurricane Maria offers scientific opportunities to test the effect of severe environmental change on behaviors and bodies, precisely because Cayo Santiago has been a rich and foundational resource for long term behavioral study. Primate populations of precise known lineage (pedigree) are rare, and the Cayo Santiago macaques are unique in being free-ranging populations with a long documented history and rich behavioral, genetic and anatomical research programs. The PIs will collect data (resource surveys & isotopic baseline values, animal uptake values) that allow evaluation of post-storm behavior and the consequences of the forced dietary change (from reliance in the first post-storm periods on washed-in marine resources, to greater vegetation and provisioning) with direct relevance to hypotheses about human evolution. Through daily census and observation data, they will assess survival and positioning of social groups and response to shifting landscapes (including passage of the submerged isthmus between islands). These data will add insight to future models of the effects of environmental degradation. The ability to collect these data, as well as ongoing and future long-term studies, requires the survival of the colony. Without the immediate interventions supported here, the comparative science is impossible, the survivors will likely die and the long-term scientific advances that build from them will be terminated.