Doctoral Dissertation Research: Examining the role of competition in primate dietary morphology

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This doctoral dissertation project examines how competition affects primate adaptive processes, testing the central hypothesis that primates respond to competition over food resources by focusing feeding on underutilized resources. Using measures of tooth shape to analyze traits, and stable isotope analysis to examine diet and canopy use, this project looks at differences between primate pairs by comparing populations that live together to populations that live separately. The study can provide new information relevant to conservation management programs to prevent further primate extinction by documenting the impacts of increased competition due to habitat loss. Data collected for this project create undergraduate internship opportunities and provide training in the protocols and procedures of conducting original research. Results from this research will be incorporated into learning modules based on the themes of primate diet and conservation. These learning modules will be utilized by a local non-profit educational programming group that provides scientific activities to elementary and middle school students. This project asks two research questions: 1) do closely-related primate species focus their diet on a few key food items when they live together compared to the same species when they occur separately? and 2) do closely-related primate species display morphological traits and isotopic signatures that reflect focus on fewer key resources when they live together compared to the same species when they occur separately? These questions will be tested using ecometric measures to quantify tooth shape and stable isotope data to represent diet and canopy use. By combining methods to analyze tooth shape and isotopic signatures related to habitual canopy level occupation, this project will provide new perspectives on how to reconstruct dietary behaviors and resource competition.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.