Doctoral Dissertation Research: Community Ecology of Living and Fossil Cercopithecid Primates

如今，旧大陆猴子遍布非洲和亚洲，它们具有各种身体和行为适应能力，使它们能够在一系列栖息地生存和共存。来自非洲的化石显示了过去旧大陆猴子多样性和共存的类似模式，尽管并非所有这些化石物种都存活到现在。这个博士论文项目将研究旧大陆猴子群落如何随着当地环境条件的变化而变化，以及为什么这些群落中的一些物种比其他物种更成功。与饮食适应相关的牙齿特征将用于重建现存和化石旧大陆猴子的生态，并在不同时间和地理环境下进行跨社区比较。这将为了解当前旧大陆猴群落的多样性以及预测这些群落对当前和未来环境变化的潜在反应提供长期背景。该项目将直接让本科生参与研究，包括来自STEM领域传统代表性不足群体的学生。照片和测量数据将在网上免费提供给其他研究人员；它们还将被用来制作与当地学校和博物馆共享的书面文章和教育材料，并在askananthropologistasu.edu网站上发布给公众。人们提出了一系列气候、生态、生物地理和系统发育的假设，以解释当今灵长类动物群落如何以及为什么包含某些物种和适应性的组合。本项目利用非洲和亚洲旧大陆猴群落的广泛时间和地理样本，以及非洲化石记录，系统地检验将物种多样性、适应和灭绝与当地环境现象联系起来的假设。牙齿计量数据将用于创建旧大陆猴生态形态生态位的多元模型，研究人员将根据该模型计算和比较群落生态位的数量、位置和重叠。然后，模型选择将用于评估气候因素、栖息地结构、哺乳动物竞争和分散障碍对导致群落具有相似或不同生态位的相对影响。由于旧大陆猴子在化石和现代群落中都有很好的代表性，它们为理解过去、现在和未来的多样性和灭绝的复杂模式提供了理想的模型。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

Old World monkeys are found across Africa and Asia today with various physical and behavioral adaptations that allow them to survive and coexist in a range of habitats. Fossils from Africa show a similar pattern of Old World monkey diversity and coexistence in the past, although not all of these fossil species survived to the present. This doctoral dissertation project will examine how Old World monkey communities change in response to local environmental conditions and why some species within these communities are more successful than others. Dental features associated with dietary adaptations will be used to reconstruct the ecologies of living and fossil Old World monkeys and to compare across communities from different temporal and geographic settings. This will provide long-term context for understanding the present-day diversity of Old World monkey communities and for predicting potential responses of these communities to ongoing and future environmental change. This project will directly engage undergraduates in research, including students from traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM. Photographs and measurement data will be made freely available online to other researchers; they will also be used to create written articles and educational materials shared with local schools and museums, and posted online for the general public on the AskAnAnthropologist.asu.edu website.A range of climatic, ecological, biogeographical, and phylogenetic hypotheses have been proposed to explain how and why present-day primate communities contain certain combinations of species and adaptations. This project uses a broad temporal and geographic sample of Old World monkey communities in Africa and Asia today and in the African fossil record to systematically test hypotheses linking species diversity, adaptation, and extinction with local environmental phenomena. Dental metric data will be used to create a multivariate model of the Old World monkey ecomorphological niche, from which the researchers will calculate and compare community niche volumes, positions, and overlap. Model selection will then be used to evaluate the relative influence of climate factors, habitat structure, mammalian competition, and dispersal barriers in leading communities to have similar or distinct ecomorphological niches. As Old World monkeys are well-represented in the fossil and present-day communities, they provide an ideal model for understanding complex patterns of diversity and extinction in the past, present, and future.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.