OPUS: CRS - The evolutionary ecology of the spotted hyena

该计划将综合研究野生斑点鬣狗的生态和社会行为。它的产品将包括一个可公开访问的数据库和一本应该对大学生和普通人具有广泛吸引力的书籍，向他们传授动物行为的一般知识，特别是食肉动物的行为。这本书将专注于1988年初开始的对肯尼亚斑点鬣狗的持续长期研究。它将向我们解释这些奇怪的动物在许多不同的主题上教会了我们什么，包括它们如何在没有其他猎人的帮助下成功击倒体积是自己三倍的猎物，它们如何抚养女儿以控制儿子，它们如何在不感到不适的情况下吃下大剂量的炭疽菌，以及它们如何设法篡夺狮子的食物。该项目将利用追踪个体鬣狗一生行为和繁殖成功的长期数据来了解这些现象。最后，这位研究人员将继续与包括国家地理电视台在内的几家媒体合作--这些媒体最近记录了她对斑点鬣狗的研究。这项研究将提供对导致世界上最奇怪的哺乳动物之一进化的独特特征组合的洞察；这些产品将引起行为生态学家、野生动物管理者和保护生物学家的广泛兴趣。该项目将综合30多年来对进化生态学的研究，这种进化生态学可以说是所有哺乳动物中最令人困惑的。斑点鬣狗以它们的形态、行为、生理、认知能力、社交生活和进化起源困扰着我们。这项合成的产品将包括一本书和一个干净的数据库，准备移交给新一代生物学家，希望在未来继续在肯尼亚对斑点鬣狗进行实地研究。这本书将在Niko Tinbergen的所有四个分析水平上讨论关于斑点鬣狗的问题，将我们在它们的个体发育、生理以及根据它们的系统发育历史发现的行为、智力和形态特征的适应意义方面的所有发现编织在一起。这本书还将重点介绍斑点鬣狗，作为这些主题领域中的每个领域的“脑筋急转弯”。该数据库记录了行为、生理、发育、等级和血统关系，自1988年初以来，每天都会收集肯尼亚马赛马拉国家保护区六个研究部族的多达七代鬣狗的数据。这项工作由综合组织系统部门的行为系统小组和环境生物学部门的进化过程小组共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The proposed will synthesize research on the ecology and social behavior of wild spotted hyenas. Its products will include a publicly accessible database and a book that should appeal broadly to college students and to lay people, teaching them about animal behavior in general, and carnivore behavior in particular. The book will focus on a continuous long-term study of spotted hyenas in Kenya that was started in early 1988. It will explain what these bizarre animals have taught us about a number of different topics, including how they manage to bring down prey three times their own size without help from other hunters, how they rear their daughters to dominate their sons, how they can eat large doses of anthrax bacteria without feeling ill, and how they manage to usurp food from lions. This project will leverage long term data following the behavior of individual hyenas over their lifetime and their reproductive success to understand these phenomena. Finally, the researcher will continue to collaborate with several media outlets including National Geographic Television - that have recently documented her research with spotted hyenas. This research will provide insights into the unique combination of features leading to the evolution of one of the world’s strangest mammals; the products will be of broad interest to behavioral ecologists, wildlife managers, and conservation biologists.This project will entail a synthesis of over three decades of research on the evolutionary ecology of what is arguably the more puzzling of all mammals. Spotted hyenas puzzle us with their morphology, their behavior, their physiology, their cognitive abilities, their social lives, and their evolutionary origins. Products of this synthesis will include both a book and a clean database ready to hand over to a new generation of biologists hoping to continue field study of spotted hyenas in Kenya into the future. The book will address questions about spotted hyenas at all four of Niko Tinbergen’s analytical levels, weaving together all that we have discovered in regard to their ontogeny, their physiology, and the adaptive significance of their behavioral, intellectual and morphological traits in light of their phylogenetic history. The book will also focus on spotted hyenas as ‘brain-teasers' in each of these topical areas. The database documents behavior, physiology, development, rank and genealogical relationships with data collected daily since early 1988 from up to seven generations of hyenas belonging to six study clans in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. This work is being funded jointly by the Behavioral Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and the Evolutionary Processes Cluster in the Division of Environmental Biology.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.