Enhancing infrastructure for multidisciplinary, long-term research at the Karisoke Research Center, Rwanda

位于卢旺达的Karisoke研究中心（KRC）（www.example.com）是世界上规模最大、持续时间最长的野外大猩猩研究基地。在Karisoke收集的数据为近300篇关于大猩猩及其周边地区的科学出版物做出了贡献，主题包括社会生态学，生活史，父亲和母亲的投资，个体发育，生理学，健康，喂养生态学，进化生物学和遗传学。在过去的五年里，来自17所大学的47名研究人员，包括本科生，研究生，博士后和教师，也在Karisoke进行了研究，Karisoke的数据已被用于与40多个机构的合作。尽管Karisoke作为一个研究地点取得了长期的成功，但其设施目前不足以支持这一范围的调查，并表明特设实地设施的局限性。特别是实验室和植物标本馆迫切需要翻新。这些设施缺乏适当的卫生、通风和储存样品的组织能力。该改进项目将为内分泌学、遗传学、疾病生态学和保护生物学领域的广泛跨学科研究提供所需的基础设施。主要成果将是改进实验室设施，以推进创新的跨学科研究，以及一个高功能的植物标本馆，包括一个数字档案，以帮助国家和全球合作研究，以更好地了解该地区的植物群不断增加的变化。此外，世界各地的访问研究人员以及东道国的研究人员（本科生和研究生以及科学家）将利用对这些设施的改进，因为东道国非常需要下一代科学家。在过去的15年里，对现代化的Karisoke实验室设施的需求一直在增长，并且在过去的五年里，随着新实验室技术的巨大发展和对越来越多的跨学科研究的需求的出现，这种需求变得越来越迫切。为了改善实验室工作人员和访问研究人员的工作条件，并达到国际实验室标准，需要对实验室工作空间进行多次升级，以处理和保存粪便样本，用于激素（代谢物），颗粒大小，同位素，微生物组分析和分子工作，和/或寄生虫学分析和植物岩研究，这需要最新的成像显微镜。其他改进包括安装挖掘机罩排气系统沿着与制冷装置和储存样品。KRC植物标本室将被重建为一个生物样本储存室，并配备最先进的储存和气候控制措施。干燥保存阶段将安装在一个单独的房间，以减少污染的风险。这些改进将使植物物种的收集更可持续，更容易获得，并可用于访问研究人员研究多样化的维龙加胡夫植被，并将允许扩大植物收藏（和潜在的其他凭证收藏）。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得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的支持。

The Karisoke Research Center (KRC) in Rwanda (www.gorillafund.org) is the world's largest and longest running continuous field site for studying gorillas in the wild. Data collected at Karisoke has contributed to nearly 300 scientific publications on gorillas and the surrounding region on topics ranging from socioecology, life history, paternal and maternal investment, ontogeny, physiology, health, feeding ecology, evolutionary biology, and genetics. Over the past five years, 47 researchers from 17 universities, including undergraduate, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty, have also conducted research at Karisoke and data from Karisoke has been used in collaborations with more than 40 institutions. Despite the long-term success of Karisoke as a research site, its facilities are not currently adequate to support this range of inquiry and demonstrate the limitations of ad hoc field facilities. Particularly, the laboratory and herbarium are desperately in need of refurbishment. These facilities lack adequate sanitation, ventilation, and the organizational capacity to store samples. This improvement project will provide the infrastructure needed for broad interdisciplinary research in the fields of endocrinology, genetics, disease ecology, and conservation biology. The primary outcomes will be an improved laboratory facility to advance innovative, interdisciplinary research, and a high-functioning herbarium, including a digital archive, to aid national and global collaborative research to better understand the increasing changes to the region's flora. In addition, improvements to these facilities will be utilized by visiting researchers around the world, as well as by host-country researchers (undergraduate and graduate students, and scientists), where there is a great need for next generation scientists. The need for a modern Karisoke laboratory facility has been growing over the past 15 years and has become acute in the last five years as vast developments in new lab techniques and a need for increasingly interdisciplinary research has emerged. To improve working conditions for laboratory staff and visiting researchers, and to meet international laboratory standards, multiple laboratory workspace upgrades are needed for processing and preserving fecal samples for hormones (metabolites), particle size, isotope, microbiome analysis, and molecular work, and or parasitological analyses and phytolite studies, which require up-to-date imaging microscopes. Additional improvements include installing exhume hood exhaust systems along with refrigeration units and storage for samples. The KRC herbarium will be reconstructed into a biological sample storage room with state of the art storage and climate control measures. A drying preservation stage will be installed in a separate room to reduce the risk of contamination. These improvements will make the collection of plant species more sustainable, accessible, and usable to visiting researchers to study the diverse Virunga massif vegetation, and will allow for the expansion of the plant collection (and potentially other voucher collections).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.