OPUS: CRS - The evolutionary ecology of the spotted hyena

作品：CRS - 斑鬣狗的进化生态学

• 批准号: 1949911
• 负责人: Kay Holekamp
• 金额: $ 23.52万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1949911&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: OPUS; CRS; evolutionary; ecology; spotted

The proposed will synthesize research on the ecology and social behavior of wild spotted hyenas. Its products will include a publicly accessible database and a book that should appeal broadly to college students and to lay people, teaching them about animal behavior in general, and carnivore behavior in particular. The book will focus on a continuous long-term study of spotted hyenas in Kenya that was started in early 1988. It will explain what these bizarre animals have taught us about a number of different topics, including how they manage to bring down prey three times their own size without help from other hunters, how they rear their daughters to dominate their sons, how they can eat large doses of anthrax bacteria without feeling ill, and how they manage to usurp food from lions. This project will leverage long term data following the behavior of individual hyenas over their lifetime and their reproductive success to understand these phenomena. Finally, the researcher will continue to collaborate with several media outlets including National Geographic Television - that have recently documented her research with spotted hyenas. This research will provide insights into the unique combination of features leading to the evolution of one of the world’s strangest mammals; the products will be of broad interest to behavioral ecologists, wildlife managers, and conservation biologists.This project will entail a synthesis of over three decades of research on the evolutionary ecology of what is arguably the more puzzling of all mammals. Spotted hyenas puzzle us with their morphology, their behavior, their physiology, their cognitive abilities, their social lives, and their evolutionary origins. Products of this synthesis will include both a book and a clean database ready to hand over to a new generation of biologists hoping to continue field study of spotted hyenas in Kenya into the future. The book will address questions about spotted hyenas at all four of Niko Tinbergen’s analytical levels, weaving together all that we have discovered in regard to their ontogeny, their physiology, and the adaptive significance of their behavioral, intellectual and morphological traits in light of their phylogenetic history. The book will also focus on spotted hyenas as ‘brain-teasers' in each of these topical areas. The database documents behavior, physiology, development, rank and genealogical relationships with data collected daily since early 1988 from up to seven generations of hyenas belonging to six study clans in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. This work is being funded jointly by the Behavioral Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and the Evolutionary Processes Cluster in the Division of Environmental Biology.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.

本研究将对野生斑鬣狗的生态学和社会行为学进行综合研究。它的产品将包括一个可公开访问的数据库和一本书，这本书将广泛吸引大学生和普通人，教授他们一般的动物行为，特别是食肉动物的行为。这本书将集中于1988年初开始的对肯尼亚斑点鬣狗的持续长期研究。它将解释这些奇怪的动物在许多不同的主题上教会了我们什么，包括它们如何在没有其他猎人帮助的情况下成功地捕获三倍于自己大小的猎物，它们如何抚养女儿来统治儿子，它们如何吃下大剂量的炭疽细菌而不感到不适，以及它们如何设法从狮子那里夺取食物。这个项目将利用长期的数据，在他们的一生和他们的繁殖成功，以了解这些现象的个别鬣狗的行为。最后，研究人员将继续与包括国家地理电视台在内的几家媒体合作，这些媒体最近记录了她对斑点鬣狗的研究。这项研究将提供独特的组合特征的见解，导致世界上最奇怪的哺乳动物之一的进化;产品将广泛的兴趣，行为生态学家，野生动物管理者，和保护生物学家。这个项目将需要超过三十年的研究综合进化生态学的什么可以说是所有哺乳动物中最令人困惑的。斑点鬣狗的形态、行为、生理、认知能力、社会生活和进化起源都让我们感到困惑。这一综合的产品将包括一本书和一个干净的数据库，准备交给新一代的生物学家，希望继续在肯尼亚的斑点鬣狗的实地研究到未来。这本书将解决有关斑点鬣狗在所有四个尼科·丁伯根的分析水平的问题，编织在一起，我们已经发现，关于他们的个体发育，他们的生理学，以及他们的行为，智力和形态特征的适应意义，根据他们的系统发育历史。这本书还将集中在斑点鬣狗作为'脑筋急转弯'在每个这些专题领域。该数据库记录了自1988年初以来每天收集的来自肯尼亚马赛马拉国家保护区六个研究氏族的七代鬣狗的行为，生理，发育，等级和系谱关系。 这项工作是由综合有机体系统部的行为系统集群和环境生物学部的进化过程集群共同资助的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。