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

极端和意想不到的环境变化给人类和我们的灵长类近亲带来了风险和机遇，无论是在进化还是现代背景下。该RAPID奖将支持玛丽亚飓风过后，波多黎各圣地亚哥岛和生活在那里的自由放养猴群的稳定工作和数据收集。 该项目在风暴后的关键时期保存重要的短期数据，当时植被和水资源有限，景观已经改变，但海洋资源更加丰富。这些数据将允许测试几个假设严重的环境变化的行为和生物学。79年来，人们一直对猴子群体进行了充分的研究，风暴前的数据整合了行为，遗传学和形态学。这些数据为生物人类学、灵长类动物生态学、认知科学和相关医学领域的进步奠定了基础。重要的是，这一RAPID将通过修复岛上的蓄水池和喂养猕猴来支持圣地亚哥岛猕猴本身的保护。这一科学上必要的基础设施支持提供了社会效益，创造了一种环境，使卡约的工作人员和当地学生研究人员-他们都是代表性不足的少数群体-能够继续他们的工作。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结果。理解，建模和减轻严重变化对人类和非人灵长类动物影响的关键是结合高质量的事件前数据，事件后立即数据和长期随访数据。 研究人员将继续研究几个关键的研究问题，这些问题与严重的环境和饮食干扰对个体可塑性和生存的影响有关。 这些问题为过去的研究（人类进化）提供了关键信息，并为未来事件的更好结果提供了前瞻性建模。 飓风玛丽亚提供了科学的机会来测试严重的环境变化对行为和身体的影响，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，并且Cayo圣地亚哥猕猴是独特的自由放养种群，具有悠久的记录历史和丰富的行为，遗传和解剖研究计划。 PI将收集数据（资源调查同位素基线值，动物摄取值），以评估风暴后的行为和强迫饮食变化的后果（从风暴后第一个时期对冲刷的海洋资源的依赖，到更大的植被和供应）与人类进化的假设直接相关。 他们将通过每天的人口普查和观察数据，评估社会群体的生存和定位以及对地貌变化的反应（包括岛屿之间淹没地峡的通道）。 这些数据将使人们更深入地了解未来的环境退化影响模型。 收集这些数据的能力，以及正在进行的和未来的长期研究，需要殖民地的生存。 如果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.