Collaborative Research: Ecological Influences on Locomotor Performance in Free-Ranging Primates

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Many primate species are partially or completely arboreal, able to move adeptly over narrow, steep, and bending branches in trees. In this project, investigators will expand their research on the mechanics of walking and leaping in wild primates moving in their natural environments, to provide a deeper understanding of primate arboreality. The team will use advanced and durable video technologies that permit high-resolution measures of locomotion in the wild. The results of this project will further our understanding of locomotor adaptations that are thought to be central to the evolution of our early primate ancestors. The project will support undergraduate and graduate student training and will enhance K-12 STEM education and public outreach through high school programs and collaborations with established science outreach programs at UT Austin. Findings from this project will be relevant to primate conservation efforts, science education, and community outreach at the field locations. This project will test hypotheses about the proximate and ultimate determinants of primate locomotor adaptation through analysis of fifteen species of free-ranging strepsirrhines and cercopithecoids. The project expands upon the investigators' previous analysis of quadrupedalism among platyrrhines and includes a three-dimensional kinematic analysis of arboreal leaping. The investigators will document locomotor kinematics of primates moving in their natural habitats using multi-camera, high-speed, high-resolution videography, sampling arboreal locomotion on a range of substrates and quantifying standard kinematic spatiotemporal variables. The morphology of the arboreal locomotor substrates will be quantified using novel remote sensing methods, with specific measurements including substrate diameter, orientation, height above the ground, and compliance. By expanding the sampled range of locomotor behaviors, body sizes, substrates, and taxa, this project will facilitate a more comprehensive investigation of how substrate variation and phylogenetic history have influenced primate locomotor adaptation and evolution. Such knowledge is critical to understanding the adaptive context in which the distinctive aspects of primate locomotion evolved.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.