IntBIO: Integrative Wildlife Nutrition: From Molecules and Microbes to Macro-Ecology

食物供应在不同生境和不同时间(即季节和年份)往往有很大差异。为了获得足够的营养和能量来生存和繁殖，动物必须调整它们的喂养和营养策略。大多数动物饲料生态学研究只提供了对动物策略的一部分的洞察，但这个团队将整合他们从分子到行为再到生态系统的不同研究专业知识，以提供更全面的理解。更具体地说，研究人员将在两个热带森林中研究六种不同季节的灵长类动物，并将整合数据，量化每个个体如何通过它们的栖息地寻找食物，它选择什么食物，食物如何被动物本身和生活在它体内的微生物消化，以及这最终如何影响它的生理和健康。最终，研究人员的目标是确定动物营养的统一原则，以提高我们对动物如何应对和适应食物短缺的理解。此外，它还将促进野生动物中微生物-微生物相互作用和宿主-微生物相互作用的知识，并为多尺度数据分析工具提供新的应用。该项目将为博士后研究员、研究生和本科生、公园管理员和社区成员提供实践跨学科培训，他们中的大多数将属于STEM中代表性不足的群体。该项目还将包括多项外展活动，包括为公立城市中学生举办关于灵长类生态学、微生物学、基因组学、营养和保护的讲习班。该项目将针对六种野生食果性灵长类动物--猪尾猕猴(Macaca Nomestrina)、红尾猴(CerCopithecus Ascanius)、灰脸颊芒贝(LopOcean Bus Albigena)、蓝猴(CerCopithecus Mitis)、猩猩(Pongo Pygmaeus Wurmbii)和白胡子长臂猿(Hylobates Albibarbus)--占据两个长期的野外地点(印度尼西亚图安南生物研究站和乌干达基巴莱国家公园)。利用在每个地点连续两年的季节收集的数据，该项目将确定随着时间的推移，个别野生、非人类灵长类物种的取食行为、营养摄取、生理和微生物功能随着食物可获得性的变化程度(种内水平)，比较同域非人类灵长类物种之间调节营养的行为、生理和微生物策略的相对重要性(物种间水平)，并确定具有不同食物可获得性模式的森林之间非人类灵长类动物营养调节策略的保守程度(生态系统水平)。该项目将促进改进的灵长类营养模型的开发，该模型可用于确定可在一系列生态环境和规模上测试和应用的统一营养原理。该奖项反映了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。

Food availability often varies extensively in different habitats and across time (i.e., seasons and years). To obtain sufficient nutrients and energy to survive and reproduce, animals must adjust their feeding and nutritional strategies. Most animal feeding ecology research only provides insight into part of an animal’s strategy, but this team will integrate their diverse research expertise—ranging from molecules to behavior to ecosystems—to provide a more holistic understanding. More specifically, the investigators will study six species of primates across seasons in two tropical forests and will integrate data that quantifies how each individual moves through their habitats to find food, what foods it chooses, how the food is digested by the animal itself and by microbes that live in its gut, and how this ultimately affects its physiology and health. Ultimately, the researchers aim to identify a unified principle of animal nutrition that can improve our understanding of how animals respond and adapt to food scarcity. In addition, it will also advance knowledge of microbe-microbe interactions and host-microbe interactions in wild animals and provide new applications for multi-scale data analysis tools. The project will provide hands-on interdisciplinary training to postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, park wardens, and community members, the majority of whom will belong to underrepresented groups in STEM. This project will also involve multiple outreach activities, including workshops on primate ecology, microbiology, genomics, nutrition, and conservation for public urban middle school students. The project will target six species of wild frugivorous primates--pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina), redtail monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius), grey-cheeked mangbeys (Lophocebus albigena), blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis), orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii), and white-bearded gibbons (Hylobates albibarbus)--occupying two long-term field sites (Tuanan Biological Research Station, Indonesia and Kibale National Park, Uganda). Leveraging data collected continuously across seasons at each site for two years, the project will determine the extent to which feeding behavior, nutrient intake, physiology, and microbiome function shift in response to food availability in individual wild, non-human primate species over time (Intra-species Level), compare the relative importance of behavioral, physiological, and microbial strategies for modulating nutrition among sympatric non-human primate species (Inter-species Level), and determine the extent to which non-human primate strategies for modulating nutrition are conserved between forests with different patterns of food availability (Ecosystem Level). The project will facilitate the development of improved models of primate nutrition that can be used to identify unified principles of nutrition that can be tested and applied across a range of ecological contexts and scales.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.