Doctoral Dissertation Research: Hard tissue correlates of primate growth rate variation

生长是物种生物学的一个核心方面，与其他灵长类动物相比，现代人类在生长的时间、持续时间和速度上有着根本的不同。了解现代人类的生长模式是何时以及为何进化的，是理解现代人类在灵长类动物中独特之处的关键。本博士论文项目通过脑垂体和骨结构蝶鞍研究了灵长类动物生长速率变化与激素基础之间的联系。在此过程中，它将开发一种新的、非破坏性的方法来估计个体的生长速度，并将研究生态和环境对现存灵长类动物生长速度的影响。这些数据提供的对垂体和蝶鞍生长和进化的见解也有可能为诊断垂体异常状况和生长缺陷的病因或与垂体激素相关的疾病提供信息。该项目将支持亚利桑那州立大学（ASU）的研究生培训和本科生研究经验，扩大教育机会，并为本科生提供先进的可视化和3D处理技能，这些技能可以应用于工程和医学等各个领域。此外，研究人员将通过科学教育推广活动向学生和公众传播项目发现。鉴于增长的重要性，长期以来，影响增长率的最终原因（或选择压力）一直是研究的主题，但支撑增长率变化的直接机制却没有得到很好的研究。在近似值上，身体的生长是由垂体等内分泌腺产生的激素的直接结果。该项目建立在垂体大小（与哺乳动物分类群的生长速度呈正相关）和蝶鞍（垂体所在的骨骼结构）之间的关系之上，首先测试非人灵长类动物蝶鞍的大小是否反映了身体的生长速度。这一目标将通过将3D颅骨形态学数据与经过充分研究的灵长类动物种群的生长数据配对来实现。其次，本研究将评估生态学和人口学方面（即资源可用性、食物质量、死亡率等最终原因）与研究群体和51个物种的比较样本中现存灵长类动物的身体生长速度之间的关系。然后，它将评估这些生态变量是否也解释了相对蝶鞍大小的变化。总之，这个项目的互补组成部分将有助于更好地理解灵长类动物的生长。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。

Growth is a central aspect of a species’ biology, and modern humans are fundamentally different in the timing, duration, and pace of our growth compared to other primates. Understanding when and why the modern human growth pattern evolved is key to understanding part of what makes modern humans unique among primates. This doctoral dissertation project examines the links between variation in primate growth rates and hormonal underpinnings via the pituitary gland and a bony structure, the sella turcica. In doing so, it will develop a novel, non-destructive method for estimating individual growth rates and will investigate the effects of ecology and environment on living primates’ growth rates. The insights into pituitary and sella turcica growth and evolution provided by these data also have the potential to inform diagnoses of abnormal pituitary conditions and the etiology of growth deficiencies or diseases related to pituitary hormones. This project will support graduate training and undergraduate research experiences at Arizona State University (ASU), expanding educational opportunities and providing undergraduates with advanced visualization and 3D processing skills that can be applied to fields as varied as engineering and medicine. In addition, the researcher will communicate project findings through science education outreach activities for student and public audiences. Given the importance of growth, the ultimate causes (or selective pressures) that shape growth rates have long been the subject of research, but the proximate mechanisms that underpin variation in growth rates are less well studied. At the proximate level, body growth is the direct result of hormones produced by endocrine glands such as the pituitary. This project builds upon the relationship between the size of the pituitary, which is positively correlated with growth rate across mammalian taxa, and the sella turcica, the bony structure within which the pituitary gland is housed, to first test whether the size of the nonhuman primate sella turcica reflects body growth rate. This goal will be achieved by pairing 3D cranial morphology data with growth data from well-studied primate populations. Second, this research will assess how aspects of ecology and demography (i.e., ultimate causes such as resource availability, food quality, mortality) relate to living primates’ body growth rates both within the study populations and across a comparative sample of 51 species. It will then assess whether these ecological variables also explain variations in relative sella turcica size. Together, the complementary components of this project will contribute to a better understanding of primate growth.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.