Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effects of nutritional ecology and feeding competition on growth and development

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。学习吃什么，如何以及在哪里找到食物是发展过程中出现的重大挑战。这种挑战也可能是社会性的，因为个人必须与他人竞争获得食物。然而，人们对摄食竞争如何影响食物选择和发育结果知之甚少，特别是在食物丰富且均匀分布在环境中的情况下。这篇博士论文的研究测试了饲养生态的变化，包括食物竞争，如何影响野生青少年非人类灵长类动物居住在不断变化的生态和人口环境中的食物选择和发育结果。研究结果有助于现有的保护管理计划，并提供具体的培训机会，研究生和本科生。研究结果将广泛传播给学术界和非学术界的观众。该提案融合了营养生态学和生活史的理论，以研究发育中的非人类灵长类动物之间的摄食竞争的意义，这些灵长类动物缺乏成年人的觅食能力。主要目的包括：1）食物营养特性的变化沿着生态梯度; 2）发展的成年人一样的觅食能力;和3）喂养竞争对婴幼儿和少年个体的饮食发展的影响。研究人员整合了关于食物营养特性和摄食行为的新的和长期的数据，这些数据是在多种栖息地类型中取样的。他们从植物食物样本中收集新的营养数据，以及通过长期监测和新的行为观察产生的喂养数据。结果通知灵长类动物的少年时期的进化的理解，提高我们的理解如何不成熟的影响，喂养竞争，即使在食物显然是丰富的背景下。此外，这项研究产生了关于发展对生态变化的反应的见解，这对预测种群动态和相关的保护工作的影响很重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得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的支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Learning what to eat, how, and where to find food are significant challenges that arise over the course of development. Such challenges can also be social, when individuals have to compete with others for access to food. Yet how feeding competition affects food choice and developmental outcomes is poorly understood, particularly in scenarios where food is abundant and distributed evenly across an environment. This doctoral dissertation research tests how variation in feeding ecologies, including food competition, affects food choice and developmental outcomes among wild juvenile non-human primates inhabiting changing ecological and demographic environments. Results contribute to existing conservation management plans and provide concrete training opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students. Results will be disseminated widely to academic and non-academic audiences.The proposal merges theory from nutritional ecology and life history to investigate the significance of feeding competition among developing non-human primates, who lack the foraging competence of adults. Major objectives include investigating: 1) variation in food nutritional properties along ecological gradients; 2) development of adult-like foraging competence; and 3) impacts of feeding competition on dietary development of infant and juvenile individuals. The researchers integrate novel and long-term data on food nutritional properties and feeding behavior sampled across a diversity of habitat types. They collect novel nutritional data from plant food samples as well as feeding data generated through long-term monitoring and new behavioral observations. Results inform understanding of the evolution of primate juvenile periods, by improving our understanding of how immatures are impacted by feeding competition, even in contexts where food is apparently abundant. Further, this research generates insights regarding developmental responses to changes in ecology, which are important for predicting population dynamics and associated implications for conservation efforts.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.