How Maternal Stress Influences Offspring Health & Development in Wild Chimpanzees

母子关系是决定后代存活和繁殖成功的关键因素 大多数哺乳动物，包括人类。了解行为和最接近的方法，通过 因此，母亲的行为会影响后代的成功，因此有很长的研究历史，但研究是 对圈养人口有偏见是可以理解的。虽然优雅的圈养作品展示了 母性行为和压力生理的代代相传，他们缺乏充分！范围 环境异质性是动态行为-生理-环境轴的关键部分。 这项研究通过调查母体行为和应激生理之间的相互作用填补了这一空白 野生黑猩猩是第一次。特别是，这项研究整合了一项无与伦比的40年来的行为 包含新的行为、生理和健康数据的数据集：1)调查 母体压力与行为，2)研究母体行为与子代的关系 健康、压力和发育，以及3)测试母亲行为的短期健康后果如何起作用 跨越几代人。这些目标将在贡贝国家公园的黑猩猩身上实现 世界上持续时间最长的黑猩猩研究地点。为了达到这些目标，长期数据分析是 与新的多日制家庭配对，包括收集详细的行为数据和粪便 样本。粪便样本被用来提取应激激素，量化寄生虫的负载，并测量 免疫功能。这种方法允许母亲的行为直接与后代的生理和 健康结果。 这项研究的结果将对复杂的母婴关系和 HGW它可以跨越几代人；也就是说，它将解析出家庭系统的哪些部分在 来自那些对生殖成功有长期影响的短期影响。理解这一点 在黑猩猩身上的研究将直接应用于人类的相同课题。

The mother-offspring relationship is the key determinant of offspring survival and reproductive success in most mammals, including humans. Understanding the behavioral and proximate means through which matemal behavior Influences offspring success therefore has a long research history but studies are understandably biased towards captive populations. While elegant captive work demonstrates the transmission of maternal behavior and stress physiology across generations, they lack the ful! extent of environmental heterogeneity that is a critical part of the dynamic behavior-physiology-environment axis. This research fills that gap by investigating the interplay between matemal behavior and stress physiology in wild chimpanzees for the first time. In particular, this study integrates an unrivaled 40-year behavioral dataset with new behavioral, physiological, and health data to: 1) investigate the relationship between maternal stress and behavior, 2) investigate the relationship between maternal behavior and offspring health, stress, and development, and 3) test how short-term fitness consequences of maternal behavior act across generations. These aims will be addressed amorig the chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, the longest, continuous chimpanzee study site in the world. To address these aims, long-term data analysis is paired with new multiple day family follows which include the collection of detailed behavioral data and fecal samples. Fecal samples are used to extract stress hormones, quantify parasite loads, and measure immune function. This approach allows maternal behavior to be linked directly to offspring physiological and health outcomes. The results ofthis study will yield a functional understanding ofthe complex mother-infant relationship and hgw it works across generations; that is, it will parse out which parts ofthe family systern are important in the short-term from those that have long-term consequences for reproductive success. Understanding this in chimpanzees will have direct application to the same topic in humans.