RAPID: Investigating primate infant care via canopy-based research

这一快速奖项将支持在野生灵长类物种中收集时间敏感的数据，以评估一个人在早期婴儿期和儿童发展期间与其物理和社会环境的互动如何与其肠道微生物多样性的长期模式有关。这项研究将有助于不断增长的关于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相互作用的知识。具体地说，这项研究将结合关于巢中婴儿护理的遗传和行为抽样，并试验针对婴儿、他们的巢和他们的母亲复杂的合作婴儿护理策略的新的森林树冠数据收集方法，重点关注最近的出生队列。该项目还将与K-12课堂教师、灵长类保护教育工作者和Google Expeditions的开发人员建立合作伙伴关系，以生成在线内容，包括创建教案和虚拟现实“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科学领域的实地研究。越来越多的研究表明，灵长类宿主和肠道微生物群落之间的相互作用是复杂和有益的。宿主尤其依赖微生物进行从消化到免疫的各种过程。然而，尽管宿主-微生物相互作用至关重要，但对它们的发育和维持的因素还没有很好的了解。野生绒毛狐猴的特点是它们的社会关系的数量、类型和强度都有很大的变化，这为研究不同的生物、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，研究人员将结合现场观察和巢穴摄像头来持续监测毛茸茸的狐猴在巢中的照顾行为；爬树和基于树冠的研究以采样婴儿、它们的母亲和他们的巢中的微生物组数据；以及兽医健康评估，将社会行为和微生物组的发展与长期的生理结果联系起来。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.