CSBR: Living Stocks: Support of the Duke Lemur Center for the Study of Primate Biology and History

该合同将部分支持杜克狐猴中心（DLC）的运营。DLC是世界上最濒危和生物多样性最丰富的灵长类动物，马达加斯加狐猴的一个独特的活体收藏。这个群体是50多年来圈养繁殖、制度交换和最初在野外捕获的动物的产物。狐猴是马达加斯加生物多样性热点地区独有的物种，由于它们的极度濒危状态，它们不是一种可再生资源。DLC为所有年龄和学术水平的学生提供了一个特殊的训练基地。在其50年的历史中，数千名从K-12到研究生水平的学生参与并受到他们在DLC的经历的启发。此外，成千上万的普通公众游客通过与DLC的工作人员、学生和藏品的接触，了解了生物多样性发现和保护的概念，以及生物研究的力量。DLC是一个推动跨学科研究、学术研究和生物保护的生活实验室，涵盖生物学科，从行为生态学到脑科学、进化生态学、微生物宏基因组学、比较基因组学、生物力学、One Health疾病动力学、老龄化和人口统计学、生物多样性保护、古生物学、气候变化、比较生理学、物种形成遗传学、感觉生物学等。该奖项将有助于DLC实现其短期和长期目标，其中包括改善对本科生研究项目的支持，参与交流和贷款协议，以保持和增强物种和遗传多样性，以及利用新技术改进涉及狐猴的比较生物学研究。该项目支持的研究和种群护理项目将由一个专门的专业团队进行监督，这些专业团队共有5名博士、3名硕士、2名副博士，此外，他们在狐猴研究、健康、饲养、保护和圈养管理方面拥有200多年的直接经验。DLC是世界上唯一一个研究人员可以随时获得狐猴的地方，在那里，生物样本、几十年的医疗记录、灭绝类群的化石代表和丰富的生活史都可以进行比较研究。可以在网上（lemur.duke.edu）获得蚁群清单、人口统计、元数据和研究机会。DLC服务于多个教育社区，包括普通公众，K-12，本科生，研究生和研究生。对于K-12学生，活动包括夏令营和各种课堂学习和互动活动，通过在线工具进行教育推广，增加远程学习的参与度。兽医系还通过本科生勤工俭学机会和兽医学生培训来支持教育活动。重要的是，DLC致力于通过非原生境圈养管理和广泛的基于社区的马达加斯加项目开展保护活动。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

This award will partially support operations of the Duke Lemur Center (DLC). The DLC is a unique living stock collection of the world's most endangered and biologically diverse primates, the lemurs of Madagascar. The colony is the product of more than 50 years of captive breeding, institutional exchange, and initially, animals caught in the wild. Lemurs are unique to the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar, and due to their critically-endangered status, are not a renewable resource. The DLC is an exceptional training ground for students across all ages and academic levels. Over its 50-year history, thousands of students ranging from K-12 through postgraduate levels have been engaged in and inspired by their experiences at the DLC. Also, hundreds of thousands of visitors from the general public have been exposed to the concepts of biodiversity discovery and conservation, as well as the power of biological research via their exposure to the DLC's staff, students, and collections. The DLC serves as a living laboratory for advancing interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and biological conservation, covering biological disciplines ranging from behavioral ecology to brain sciences, evolutionary ecology, microbial metagenomics, comparative genomics, biomechanics, One Health disease dynamics, aging and demography, biodiversity conservation, paleontology, climate change, comparative physiology, speciation genetics, sensory biology, and more. The award will help the DLC meet its short and long-term goals, which include improving support for undergraduate research projects, engaging in exchanges and loan agreements to maintain and enhance species and genetic diversity, and harnessing new technologies to improve comparative biological research involving lemurs. The research and colony-care programs that will be supported by this project have oversight from a dedicated team of professionals who collectively represent five PhDs, three Masters degrees, two DVMs, and additively, more than two hundred years of direct experience with lemur research, health, husbandry, conservation, and captive management. The DLC is the only place in the world where lemurs are readily available to investigators, and where biological samples, decades of medical records, fossil representatives of extinct taxa, and rich life-history are available for comparative studies. Access to colony inventories, demographics, metadata and research opportunities is available on-line (lemur.duke.edu). The DLC serves multiple educational communities, including the general public, K-12, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students. For K-12 students, activities include summer camps and a variety of classroom learning and interactive activities with increasing engagement in long-distance learning through on-line tools for educational outreach. The veterinary department also supports educational activities via undergraduate work-study opportunities and veterinary student training. Critically, the DLC is committed to conservation activities via both ex situ captive management and extensive community-based Madagascar programs.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.