SBE-UKRI: Form and function of primate natal coats

SBE-UKRI：灵长类动物出生皮毛的形式和功能

• 批准号: 2218421
• 负责人: James Higham
• 金额: $ 48.94万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-11-01 至 2026-10-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2218421&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBE; UKRI; Form; function; primate

The color of infants in many primates stand out clearly against adult and background color. Why and how should the most vulnerable members of a group be so conspicuous to threats? This project investigates this question and offers insight into the role of infants in the social systems of primates. The research will create and curate a new publicly accessible standardized image database of primate species alongside life history, social and ecological data and results will contribute to our understanding of why some animals change color over their lifetimes. The project will train two postdoctoral researchers plus dozens of researchers globally, including many in primate native range countries, in objective photography for studying animal coloration. The project’s comprehensive education and outreach program provides education and training opportunities to students from kindergarten to graduate school with a focus on enhancing the representation, retention, and training of underrepresented minority scholars through existing institutional and professional association-affiliated programs. Many ideas for the function of infant conspicuousness in some species have been proposed but not rigorously investigated. These include warning potentially infanticidal out-group males or predators that the infant will be defended by the group, confusing the paternity of infants to prevent infanticide, helping caregivers keep track of the infant, and facilitating the care of infants by mothers and non-mothers. This project tests these hypotheses by objectively measuring the color of many individuals from many primate species throughout infancy, carrying out a comprehensive comparative analysis of infant coloration across species, along with behavioral experiments to measure how mothers, fathers and non-fathers respond to differently colored infants. Color is measured using calibrated and standardized digital photography at zoos, sanctuaries and research centers globally, with local researchers photographing infants throughout the period of development. These are then be processed using visual-system dependent methods to get a ‘receiver-eye-view’ of primate infant appearance for 250 individuals from 80 different primate species, and by experimentally manipulating the coloration of images to assess response by different adult members of the group. Comparative analyses across primate species test the predictions made by each of the functional hypotheses about how infant color should relate to species’ behavior, ecology, and social system. This project is funded jointly by Biological Anthropology (SBE) and Behavioral Systems Cluster (BIO).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.

在许多灵长类动物中，婴儿的颜色在成体和背景颜色的映衬下明显突出。一个组织中最脆弱的成员为什么以及如何对威胁如此显眼？这个项目调查了这个问题，并提供了对婴儿在灵长类社会系统中的作用的洞察。这项研究将创建和管理一个新的可公开访问的灵长类物种标准化图像数据库，以及生活史、社会和生态数据，结果将有助于我们理解一些动物为什么会在一生中改变颜色。该项目将培训两名博士后研究人员以及全球数十名研究人员，其中包括许多灵长类原生动物国家的研究人员，学习用于研究动物着色的客观摄影。该项目的全面教育和推广计划为从幼儿园到研究生院的学生提供教育和培训机会，重点是通过现有的机构和专业协会附属计划，加强代表性不足的少数族裔学者的代表性、留住和培训。关于婴儿在某些物种中的显眼功能，已经提出了许多想法，但还没有得到严格的研究。这些措施包括警告潜在的杀婴外群体雄性或捕食者，婴儿将受到群体的保护，混淆婴儿的父亲身份以防止杀婴，帮助照顾者跟踪婴儿，以及促进母亲和非母亲对婴儿的照顾。这个项目通过客观地测量来自许多灵长类物种的许多个体在整个婴儿期的颜色，对不同物种的婴儿的颜色进行全面的比较分析，以及测量母亲、父亲和非父亲对不同颜色的婴儿的反应的行为实验来检验这些假设。在全球的动物园、保护区和研究中心，使用经过校准和标准化的数字摄影来测量颜色，当地研究人员在整个发育期间拍摄婴儿。然后使用依赖视觉系统的方法对这些数据进行处理，以获得来自80个不同灵长类物种的250个个体的灵长类婴儿外貌，并通过实验操纵图像的颜色来评估群体中不同成年成员的反应。对灵长类物种的比较分析测试了每个功能性假说做出的预测，即婴儿的颜色应该如何与物种的行为、生态和社会制度相关。该项目由生物人类学(SBE)和行为系统集群(BIO)联合资助。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。