Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ontogenetic changes in primate manual and pedal trabecular architecture

博士论文研究：灵长类手足小梁结构的个体发生变化

• 批准号: 1825467
• 负责人: William Harcourt-Smith
• 金额: $ 1.94万
• 依托单位: American Museum Natural History
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2019-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1825467&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Ontogenetic; changes

Humans are unique among primates in many ways, including that we are bipedal (walk upright) and our bodies take a long time to reach adult size and shape. Our hominin ancestors are categorized as such based on evidence for bipedality, but relatively little is known about hominin bipedalism with respect to growth and development. This doctoral dissertation project will use comparative primate skeletal material to assess how hand and foot bones change during growth in response to changes in locomotor (movement) behaviors. The research will advance knowledge about how growth impacts adult bone, with application to the hominin fossil record and the potential to inform clinical research on bone and growth. The project will also train future scientists, provide K-12 science curriculum content to a diverse range of local students, and contribute 3D digital data to online databases.The researchers will use micro-computed tomography and comparative analyses of trabecular bone measurements (as a proxy for locomotion) for multiple elements in the hands and feet of five modern primates in dentally-defined age groups, in order to accomplish the following: 1) describe ontogenetic trajectories of trabecular change in a phylogenetic context as it relates to known behavioral changes in primates representing several locomotor modes; 2) investigate the unexplored relationship of phylogenetic signal and age in trabecular bone; 3) improve understanding of the evolutionary pattern and adaptive significance of primate locomotor ontogeny, including modern humans; and 4) reconstruct hominin locomotor behavior over ontogeny based on comparisons to modern taxa. The results of this project will help address longstanding debates about hominin evolution and better inform future studies of primate ontogeny, form, function, systematics, and locomotion.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.

人类在很多方面在灵长类动物中都是独一无二的，包括我们是双足行走（直立行走），我们的身体需要很长时间才能达到成年的大小和形状。我们的古人类祖先是根据两足行走的证据来分类的，但人们对两足行走在生长和发育方面的了解相对较少。该博士论文项目将使用比较灵长类动物骨骼材料来评估手骨和足骨在生长过程中如何随着运动（运动）行为的变化而变化。该研究将增进有关生长如何影响成人骨骼的知识，并将其应用于古人类化石记录，并有可能为骨骼和生长的临床研究提供信息。该项目还将培训未来的科学家，为各类当地学生提供 K-12 科学课程内容，并向在线数据库贡献 3D 数字数据。研究人员将使用微型计算机断层扫描和对牙科定义年龄组的五种现代灵长类动物的手和脚的多个元素的骨小梁测量（作为运动的代理）进行比较分析，以完成以下任务：1）描述 系统发育背景下小梁变化的个体发育轨迹，因为它与代表几种运动模式的灵长类动物的已知行为变化有关； 2）研究骨小梁中尚未探索的系统发育信号和年龄的关系； 3）提高对灵长类运动个体发育的进化模式和适应性意义的理解，包括现代人类； 4）基于与现代类群的比较，重建个体发育中的古人类运动行为。该项目的结果将有助于解决有关人类进化的长期争论，并更好地为未来的灵长类个体发育、形态、功能、系统学和运动研究提供信息。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。