SBE-UKRI: Form and function of primate natal coats

在许多灵长类动物中，婴儿的颜色在成人和背景颜色的映衬下显得格外突出。一个群体中最脆弱的成员为什么以及如何会对威胁如此明显？这个项目调查了这个问题，并提供了深入了解婴儿在灵长类动物的社会系统中的作用。该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，结果将有助于我们了解为什么一些动物在其一生中会改变颜色。该项目将在全球范围内培训两名博士后研究人员和数十名研究人员，包括灵长类动物原产地国家的许多研究人员，以研究动物着色的客观摄影。该项目的综合教育和推广方案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方案，提高代表性不足的少数民族学者的代表性、保留率和培训。 关于婴儿引人注目在某些物种中的作用，人们提出了许多观点，但没有进行严格的研究。这些措施包括警告潜在的群体外的雄性或捕食者，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，并促进母亲和非母亲照顾婴儿。该项目通过客观测量许多灵长类物种的许多个体在整个婴儿期的颜色来测试这些假设，对不同物种的婴儿颜色进行全面的比较分析，沿着行为实验来测量母亲，父亲和非父亲对不同颜色婴儿的反应。颜色是在全球动物园、保护区和研究中心使用校准和标准化的数码摄影测量的，当地研究人员在整个发育期间拍摄婴儿。然后使用视觉系统依赖的方法来处理这些图像，以获得来自80种不同灵长类动物的250个个体的灵长类动物婴儿外观的“接收器眼睛视图”，并通过实验操作图像的着色来评估该组中不同成年成员的反应。灵长类物种之间的比较分析测试了每一个关于婴儿颜色如何与物种行为，生态和社会系统相关的功能假设所做的预测。该项目由生物人类学（SBE）和行为系统集群（BIO）共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.