FOR 2136: Sociality and Health in Primates

已经在人类和动物身上发现了社会性、健康和健身之间的密切联系，但它们的确切性质和方向以及潜在的机制仍有待探索。虽然已经确定，社会接触促进了许多寄生虫的传播，社会交往的不可避免的代价是增加了对传染病和非传染性疾病的易感性，但最近的研究表明，社会接触也可以促进良性微生物的传播，社会互动可以通过调节个人的免疫反应来缓解社会压力的后果。构成该研究股组成部分的各个项目将在对代表所有主要灵长类辐射的野生灵长类动物进行协调研究的基础上，处理有关上述关系的新的和及时的问题。通过将灵长类实地研究与分子分析相结合，该研究组还将产生协同作用，旨在(I)评估三种社会性水平(社会组织、群体规模、个人)与相应微生物群落(微生物群、吞噬群、病毒体、胃肠道寄生虫)组成之间的相关性；(Ii)更好地了解调节个人应激反应的社会因素及其对健康的影响；(Iii)评估与社会性相关的健康和状况变化的健康后果。通过这个研究议程，我们的目标是克服灵长类行为生态学和生物医学研究之间的传统分裂，通过在项目和机构内部和机构之间建立密切的合作网络，并通过在一个新的和独特的项目中培训一批博士生。

Strong links between sociality, health and fitness have been identified in humans and animals, but their exact nature and direction as well as the underlying mechanisms remain to be explored. While it has been established that social contacts facilitate the transmission of many parasites, and that unavoidable costs of sociality accrue in the form of increased susceptibility to infectious and non-infectious disease, recent research has indicated that social contacts can also facilitate the transmission of benign microorganisms and that social interactions can buffer individuals from the consequences of social stress by modulating their immune response. The individual projects comprising the building blocks of this Research Unit will address novel and timely questions about the above relationships based on coordinated research on wild primates representing all major primate radiations. By combining primate field studies with molecular analyses, this Research Unit will also generate synergies aimed at (i) assessing correlations between three levels of sociality (social organization, group size, individuals) and the composition of the corresponding microorganism communities (microbiome, phagome, virome, gastrointestinal parasites) (ii) better understanding the social factors modulating individual stress responses and their health consequences, (iii) estimating fitness consequences of sociality-related variation in health and condition. With this research agenda, we aim to overcome the traditional fragmentation between primate behavioral ecology and biomedical research by generating a close network of collaborations within and between projects and institutions, and by training a cohort of PhD students in a new and unique program.