PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

智力优势：这个为期三年的项目侧重于攻击行为的群体间动态。群体之间的面对面对抗被称为群体间的激烈竞争，通常涉及一个或几个群体成员的参与，这意味着激烈竞争的成本只由几个参与者承担。虽然这种模式很普遍，但仍不清楚哪些社会、生态和生理因素导致一些个体参与IGE，而不是其他个体。以前的研究集中在优势等级，食物和伴侣的可用性，以及与群体伴侣的相关程度等因素上。这项研究包括对这些传统因素的评估，但也包括以前未检查的变量-气质和精力平衡的贡献。这两个变量都可能是有意义的预测参与组间的遭遇，并会影响广泛的类群的集体攻击的理解。本研究以南非夸祖鲁-纳塔尔的马瓦纳禁猎区的四组长尾猴为研究对象，在美国新墨西哥州大学进行实验室分析，在苏黎世大学进行数据分析和整理。更广泛的影响：群体间攻击的主题和从本项目中获得的见解将对行为生态学家、人类学家和心理学家具有重要意义。项目成果将通过同行评审的出版物、会议介绍和南非、瑞士和美国的公共媒体传播。此外，该研究员打算指导一名少数民族本科生，并根据他或她对新墨西哥州大学动物行为的兴趣程度聘请其为实习生。该研究员还将创建和维护一个有关南非数据收集和新墨西哥大学实验室分析的博客。与纽约布鲁克林的Peter Rouget中学合作（大部分学生是少数民族，来自社会经济地位低的家庭的第一代移民学生），该博客将通过研究员的个人叙述，照片，视频和问答部分向学生介绍观察行为研究，自然环境中的实地考察，灵长类动物社会生态学和保护。

Intellectual Merit: This three-year project focuses on inter-group dynamics of agressive behavior. Referred to as aggressive inter-group encounters (IGEs), face-to-face confrontations between groups typically involve the participation of one or a few group members, which means that the costs of aggressive competition are borne by only a few participants. Although this pattern is widespread, it remains unclear which social, ecological, and physiological factors cause some individuals to participate in an IGEs, but not others. Previous studies focused on factors like dominance rank, food and mate availability, and the degree of relatedness to group-mates. This research includes assessments of these traditional factors but also includes the contribution of previously unexamined variables - temperament and energetic balance. Both variables are likely to be meaningful predictors of participation in inter-group encounters and will affect the understanding of collective aggression in a wide range of taxa. This research studies four groups of vervet monkeys at the Mawana game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with laboratory analysis conducted at the University of New Mexico, USA, and data analysis and write-up conducted at the University of Zurich.Broader Impacts: The topic of inter-group aggression and insights gained from this project will be of great relevance to behavioral ecologists, anthropologists, and psychologists. Project results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and public media in South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States. In addition, the Fellow intends to mentor a minority undergraduate student and hire as an intern based on his or her level of interest in animal behavior at the University of New Mexico. The Fellow will also create and maintain a blog about data collection in South Africa and laboratory analysis at UNM. With collaboration with Peter Rouget Middle School in Brooklyn, NY (most of students are minority, first-generation immigrants students from household of low socio-economic status), the blog will introduce to the students observational behavioral research, field work in the natural environment, primate socioecology, and conservation through the Fellow's personal narrative, photos, videos, and a question-and-answer section.