How Maternal Stress Influences Offspring Health & Development in Wild Chimpanzees

描述（由申请人提供）：我的长期目标是使用黑猩猩作为模型，探索母婴关系如何影响人类后代的健康和发育。本研究的目的是确定雌性黑猩猩的主要压力源，并调查母亲压力，母亲行为和后代发育和健康之间的关系。我将追求以下具体目标：1）确定女性压力的社会生态相关性，如皮质醇水平所测量的，2）描述母亲的行为风格，并调查风格与母亲经历，母亲压力和后代性别之间的关系，3）开发后代社会和身体里程碑的进展面板，（4）探讨母亲行为与子代压力、健康和发育的关系。我将在坦桑尼亚贡贝国家公园的野生黑猩猩中进行这项研究。这项研究将联合收割机与新的行为和激素数据相结合，丰富而密集的长期数据集。自1970年以来，已经收集了详细的母婴数据，从中我将确定年龄和性别适当的发展里程碑。从2004年开始收集健康数据，包括观察性临床体征和寄生虫评估，从中我将研究后代压力和健康之间的关系。为了补充现有的数据，我将通过粪便激素提取使用非侵入性采样进行激素分析，并收集青少年和青少年的行为数据。该研究社区目前包含22对母子对，其中包括3对孤儿;有39位母亲和91对不同母子对的长期数据。鉴于它们与人类的遗传和行为相似，黑猩猩代表了一个特别有用的系统，可以用来研究社会地位的复杂影响，获得资源，以及对母婴关系的压力及其对后代发育和健康的后续影响。研究结果还可以通过比较一个已经进化到单亲母亲的密切相关物种（黑猩猩）和一个双亲照顾是常态的物种（人类），来深入了解为什么单亲父母在人类中是一种缺陷。因此，这项研究与美国国立卫生研究院的使命有关，特别是国家儿童健康与发展研究所，该研究所支持旨在增加我们对儿童，成人，家庭和社区健康的理解的研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): My long-term goal is to use chimpanzees as a model by which to explore how the mother-infant relationship influences offspring health and development in humans. The objective of this study is to identify key stressors for female chimpanzees, and to investigate the relationship between maternal stress, maternal behavior, and offspring development and health. I will pursue the following specific aims: 1) To determine the socio-ecological correlates of female stress as measured by cortisol levels, 2) To characterize maternal behavioral styles, and to investigate the relationship between style and maternal experience, maternal stress, and offspring sex, 3) To develop an offspring progress panel of social and physical milestones, and 4) To investigate how maternal behavior is associated with offspring stress, health, and development. I will conduct this research among the wild chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. This study will combine a rich and dense long-term dataset with new behavioral and hormonal data. Detailed mother-infant data have been collected since 1970, from which I will determine age and sex appropriate developmental milestones. Health data, including observational clinical sign and parasite assessments, have been collected since 2004, from which I will investigate the relationship between offspring stress and health. To complement existing data, I will use non-invasive sampling for hormone analysis via fecal hormone extraction and collect behavioral data on juveniles and adolescents. The study community currently contains 22 mother-offspring pairs, including 3 orphans; long-term data are available on 39 mothers and 91 different mother-offspring dyads. Given their genetic and behavioral similarities to humans, chimpanzees represent a particularly useful system in which to investigate the complex influences of social status, access to resources, and stress on mother-infant relationships and its subsequent effects on offspring development and health in humans. The results may also provide insight into why single parenting is a deficiency in humans by comparing a closely related species that has evolved towards single mothering (chimpanzees) with one where bi-parental care is the norm (humans). This research is therefore relevant to the missions of the National Institutes of Health, particularly the National Institute for Child Health and Development which supports research geared towards increasing our understanding of child, adult, family, and community health.