Applying spatial epidemiology and ecological models to understand the abundance and social organization of folivorous primates

我的长期目标是在行为和生态学的界面上工作，以发展关于灵长类动物丰度和社会组织的生态决定因素的一般原则。我将建立在我以前的研究营养需求和寄生虫病生态学在基巴莱国家公园，乌干达和（1）探索一个相对较新的领域创造的空间流行病学。SARS和猪流感等疾病的突然出现，埃博拉等疾病对人类和野生动物社区的破坏性影响，以及艾滋病毒等病毒造成的巨大社会和经济成本，都强调了我们需要了解疾病传播的生态学。该项目将确定生态因素如何导致传播概率升高的空间变化并影响疾病的传播。我们将开发基于代理的模型来评估未来环境和气候变化如何影响疾病动态。此外，我将（2）继续完善食叶动物的社会生态模型;并且，在授权期结束时，我可以开始研究社会策略的适应性后果。红疣猴，我们的长期重点物种，提供了一个物种，其中相对较低的侵略水平被认为是在资源有限的条件。这意味着这个物种已经进化出了应对竞争的策略，因此我们将研究是什么使它成为一种“和平”的灵长类动物。最后（3）我将建立在40多年的数据，我对基巴莱生态（21年以上是我的），以量化生态变化。

My long-term goal is to work at the interface of behaviour and ecology to develop general principles concerning ecological determinants of the abundance and social organization of primates. I will build on my prior research on nutritional requirements and parasite disease ecology in Kibale National Park, Uganda and (1) explore a relatively new field coined spatial epidemiology. The sudden appearance of diseases like SARS and swine flu, the devastating impacts that diseases like Ebola have had on both human and wildlife communities, and the immense social and economic costs created by viruses like HIV underscore our need to understand the ecology of disease transmission. This project will determine how ecological factors lead to spatial variation in elevated transmission probability and influence the spread of diseases. We will develop Agent-Based Models to evaluate how future environmental and climate change could influence disease dynamics. In addition, I will (2) continue to refine socioecological models for folivores; and, with 12 years of data in hand at the end of the granting period, I can start to look at fitness consequences of social strategies. Red colobus, our long-term focal species, provides a species where a relatively low level of aggression is seen in conditions of limiting resources. This implies that this species has evolved coping strategies to deal with competition, thus we will study what makes this a "peaceful" primate. Finally (3) I will build on the 40+ years of data I have on the ecology of Kibale (21+ years are mine) to quantify ecological change.