Doctoral Dissertation Research: Hard tissue correlates of primate growth rate variation

生长是一个物种生物学的一个核心方面，与其他灵长类动物相比，现代人类在生长的时间，持续时间和速度方面有着根本的不同。了解现代人类生长模式是何时以及为什么进化的，是理解现代人类在灵长类动物中独特之处的关键。这个博士论文项目研究灵长类动物生长速度的变化与通过脑垂体和骨质结构蝶鞍的激素基础之间的联系。在这样做的过程中，它将开发一种新的，非破坏性的方法来估计个体的生长速度，并将调查生态和环境对活灵长类动物生长速度的影响。这些数据提供的垂体和蝶鞍生长和演变的见解也有可能为诊断垂体异常状况和与垂体激素相关的生长缺陷或疾病的病因提供信息。该项目将支持亚利桑那州立大学（ASU）的研究生培训和本科生研究经验，扩大教育机会，并为本科生提供先进的可视化和3D处理技能，可应用于工程和医学等领域。此外，研究人员还将通过面向学生和公众的科学教育推广活动来传播项目成果。考虑到增长的重要性，长期以来，形成增长率的最终原因（或选择性压力）一直是研究的主题，但支撑增长率变化的近端机制却没有得到很好的研究。在近水平上，身体生长是由内分泌腺（如脑垂体）产生的激素的直接结果。该项目建立在垂体的大小之间的关系，这是正相关的生长速度在哺乳动物类群，和鞍，骨结构内的垂体腺被安置，首先测试是否非人灵长类动物鞍的大小反映身体的生长速度。这一目标将通过将3D颅骨形态数据与充分研究的灵长类动物种群的生长数据配对来实现。其次，这项研究将评估生态和人口统计学方面（即，最终的原因，如资源的可用性，食物质量，死亡率）涉及到生活灵长类动物的身体增长率，无论是在研究种群内，并在51个物种的比较样本。然后，它将评估这些生态变量是否也可以解释蝶鞍相对大小的变化。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Growth is a central aspect of a species’ biology, and modern humans are fundamentally different in the timing, duration, and pace of our growth compared to other primates. Understanding when and why the modern human growth pattern evolved is key to understanding part of what makes modern humans unique among primates. This doctoral dissertation project examines the links between variation in primate growth rates and hormonal underpinnings via the pituitary gland and a bony structure, the sella turcica. In doing so, it will develop a novel, non-destructive method for estimating individual growth rates and will investigate the effects of ecology and environment on living primates’ growth rates. The insights into pituitary and sella turcica growth and evolution provided by these data also have the potential to inform diagnoses of abnormal pituitary conditions and the etiology of growth deficiencies or diseases related to pituitary hormones. This project will support graduate training and undergraduate research experiences at Arizona State University (ASU), expanding educational opportunities and providing undergraduates with advanced visualization and 3D processing skills that can be applied to fields as varied as engineering and medicine. In addition, the researcher will communicate project findings through science education outreach activities for student and public audiences. Given the importance of growth, the ultimate causes (or selective pressures) that shape growth rates have long been the subject of research, but the proximate mechanisms that underpin variation in growth rates are less well studied. At the proximate level, body growth is the direct result of hormones produced by endocrine glands such as the pituitary. This project builds upon the relationship between the size of the pituitary, which is positively correlated with growth rate across mammalian taxa, and the sella turcica, the bony structure within which the pituitary gland is housed, to first test whether the size of the nonhuman primate sella turcica reflects body growth rate. This goal will be achieved by pairing 3D cranial morphology data with growth data from well-studied primate populations. Second, this research will assess how aspects of ecology and demography (i.e., ultimate causes such as resource availability, food quality, mortality) relate to living primates’ body growth rates both within the study populations and across a comparative sample of 51 species. It will then assess whether these ecological variables also explain variations in relative sella turcica size. Together, the complementary components of this project will contribute to a better understanding of primate growth.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.