RAPID: Investigating primate infant care via canopy-based research

该RAPID奖将支持野生灵长类物种的时间敏感数据收集，以评估个体在婴儿期和儿童期发育期间与其身体和社会环境的相互作用如何与其肠道微生物多样性的长期模式相关。这项研究将有助于了解包括人类在内的灵长类动物早期环境、微生物群和生理健康之间复杂的相互作用。具体而言，该研究将结合巢中婴儿护理的遗传和行为抽样，并试点新的森林冠层数据收集方法，用于婴儿、它们的巢穴和它们的母亲复杂的合作婴儿护理策略，重点是最近出生的队列。该项目还将与K-12课堂教师、灵长类动物保护教育者和b谷歌Expeditions的开发人员建立伙伴关系，以生成在线内容，包括创建课程计划和虚拟现实“探险”，这些内容将吸引、教授和培训来自不同背景的中小学生进行STEM科学的实地研究。越来越多的研究表明，灵长类宿主与肠道微生物群落之间的相互作用是复杂而有益的。宿主尤其依赖微生物进行从消化到免疫等一系列过程。然而，尽管宿主-微生物相互作用至关重要，但其发展和维持的因素尚未得到很好的理解。野生狐猴的特点是其社会关系的数量、类型和强度都存在很大差异，这为研究不同生物、环境和社会力量对建立和维持肠道微生物多样性的相对影响提供了机会。因此，研究人员将使用实地观察和巢内摄像机相结合的方法，持续监测皱毛狐猴在巢内照顾婴儿的行为；爬树和基于树冠的研究，对婴儿、他们的母亲和他们的巢穴进行微生物组数据采样；以及兽医健康评估，将社会行为和微生物群发育与长期生理结果联系起来。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。

This RAPID award will support time-sensitive data collection in a wild primate species, to evaluate how an individual’s interactions with their physical and social environments during early infancy and childhood development relate to their long-term patterns of gut microbial diversity. The research will contribute to the growing body of knowledge about complex interactions between early environment, the microbiome, and physiological well-being in primates, including humans. Specifically, the study will combine genetic and behavioral sampling on infant care in the nest and pilot new forest canopy data collection methods for infants, their nests, and their mothers’ complex cooperative infant care strategies, focusing on a recent birth cohort. The project also will build on partnerships with K-12 classroom teachers, primate conservation educators, and developers at Google Expeditions to generate online content, including the creation of lesson plans and virtual reality “expeditions,” that will engage, teach, and train primary and secondary school students from diverse backgrounds in field research in the STEM sciences.A growing body of research shows that interactions between primate hosts and the microbial communities in their gut are complex and beneficial. Hosts, in particular, rely on microorganisms for processes ranging from digestion to immunity. However, despite the critical importance of host-microbe interactions, the factors responsible for their development and maintenance are not well understood. Ruffed lemurs in the wild are characterized by substantial variation in the numbers, types, and strengths of their social relationships, providing an opportunity to study the relative effects of different biological, environmental, and social forces on establishing and maintaining gut microbial diversity. The investigators will therefore use a combination of field observations and nest cams to continuously monitor ruffed lemur infant care behaviors in the nest; tree climbing and canopy-based research to sample infants, their mothers, and their nests for microbiome data; and veterinary health assessments to link social behavior and microbiome development to long-term physiological outcomes.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.