Collaborative Research: Ecological Influences on Locomotor Performance in Free-Ranging Primates

许多灵长类动物部分或完全是树栖动物，能够熟练地在狭窄、陡峭和弯曲的树枝上移动。在这个项目中，研究人员将扩展他们对野生灵长类动物在自然环境中行走和跳跃机制的研究，从而对灵长类动物的树栖习性有更深入的了解。该团队将使用先进且耐用的视频技术，以实现野外运动的高分辨率测量。这个项目的结果将进一步加深我们对运动适应的理解，运动适应被认为是我们早期灵长类祖先进化的核心。该项目将支持本科生和研究生的培训，并将通过高中项目和与德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校已建立的科学推广项目合作，加强K-12 STEM教育和公众宣传。该项目的研究结果将与灵长类动物保护工作、科学教育和野外社区外展有关。该项目将通过对15种自由放养的链霉菌和颈猿的分析，测试关于灵长类动物运动适应的近因和最终决定因素的假设。该项目扩展了研究人员先前对平唇龙四足行走的分析，并包括对树栖跳跃的三维运动学分析。研究人员将使用多摄像机、高速、高分辨率摄像技术记录灵长类动物在自然栖息地的运动运动学，对一系列基质上的树动进行采样，并对标准运动时空变量进行量化。树木运动载体的形态将使用新型遥感方法进行量化，具体测量包括载体直径、方向、离地高度和顺应性。通过扩大运动行为、体型、基质和分类群的采样范围，该项目将有助于更全面地研究基质变化和系统发育历史如何影响灵长类动物的运动适应和进化。这些知识对于理解灵长类动物运动的独特方面进化的适应性环境至关重要。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。

Many primate species are partially or completely arboreal, able to move adeptly over narrow, steep, and bending branches in trees. In this project, investigators will expand their research on the mechanics of walking and leaping in wild primates moving in their natural environments, to provide a deeper understanding of primate arboreality. The team will use advanced and durable video technologies that permit high-resolution measures of locomotion in the wild. The results of this project will further our understanding of locomotor adaptations that are thought to be central to the evolution of our early primate ancestors. The project will support undergraduate and graduate student training and will enhance K-12 STEM education and public outreach through high school programs and collaborations with established science outreach programs at UT Austin. Findings from this project will be relevant to primate conservation efforts, science education, and community outreach at the field locations. This project will test hypotheses about the proximate and ultimate determinants of primate locomotor adaptation through analysis of fifteen species of free-ranging strepsirrhines and cercopithecoids. The project expands upon the investigators' previous analysis of quadrupedalism among platyrrhines and includes a three-dimensional kinematic analysis of arboreal leaping. The investigators will document locomotor kinematics of primates moving in their natural habitats using multi-camera, high-speed, high-resolution videography, sampling arboreal locomotion on a range of substrates and quantifying standard kinematic spatiotemporal variables. The morphology of the arboreal locomotor substrates will be quantified using novel remote sensing methods, with specific measurements including substrate diameter, orientation, height above the ground, and compliance. By expanding the sampled range of locomotor behaviors, body sizes, substrates, and taxa, this project will facilitate a more comprehensive investigation of how substrate variation and phylogenetic history have influenced primate locomotor adaptation and evolution. Such knowledge is critical to understanding the adaptive context in which the distinctive aspects of primate locomotion evolved.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.