Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on primate movement patterns and dispersal

博士论文研究：人为栖息地破碎化对灵长类动物运动模式和扩散的影响

• 批准号: 1540270
• 负责人: Anthony Di Fiore
• 金额: $ 0.86万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-15 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1540270&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Effects; anthropogenic

Over the past several thousand years, human expansion into tropical forests and the associated transformation of landscapes into patchworks of forested, agricultural, and urban habitats has had a negative impact on primate populations and led to increases in direct conflict between humans and wild, nonhuman primates. However, despite this long history of contact, the influence of human (anthropogenic) factors on primate evolutionary trajectories is not fully understood. This project will examine how anthropogenically-fragmented landscapes affect gene flow, genetic structure, and functional connectivity among wild populations of the silvery-brown tamarin, a charismatic and endangered primate from the Rio Magdalena valley in northern Colombia. The study will strengthen long-term international collaborations between US and Colombian researchers and help bolster relationships between researchers, the local community, and the state environmental corporation, which will further support the conservation of this endangered primate. It will also provide research, training, and mentorship opportunities for a female graduate student and undergraduates, thereby promoting and engaging greater participation of underrepresented constituencies in STEM disciplines.Tamarins are small-bodied monkeys with relatively short generation times, and across their geographic range they are subject to ongoing anthropogenic landscape changes. At the same time, they show a high degree of mobility and ability to survive in human-modified habitats, resulting in their sharing space with humans and making tamarins ideal models for understanding the evolutionary consequences of habitat fragmentation. Using next-generation genomic techniques, this project will type tens of thousands of markers from across the nuclear genome for dozens of individual tamarins to determine how natural and anthropogenic factors together shape patterns of genetic variation at the landscape level. This will be one of the first genomic studies of population structure in wild primates and one of the first to explicitly examine the effects of human-induced habitat change. The genetic data and results will be disseminated through scientific journals and presentations and will be given to environmental agencies for future implementation of conservation actions.

在过去的几千年中，人类向热带森林的扩展以及将景观转化为森林，农业和城市栖息地的拼凑而成的对灵长类动物种群产生了负面影响，并导致了人类与野性非人类灵长类动物之间的直接冲突。然而，尽管接触的历史悠久，但人类（人为）因素对灵长类动物进化轨迹的影响尚未完全了解。该项目将研究人为碎片的景观如何影响基因流，遗传结构和野生棕褐色的野生种群之间的基因流，这是一种来自哥伦比亚北部的里约马格达莱纳河谷的富有魅力和濒临灭绝的灵长类动物。这项研究将加强美国与哥伦比亚研究人员之间的长期国际合作，并帮助加强研究人员，当地社区和国家环境公司之间的关系，这将进一步支持这种濒临灭绝的灵长类动物。它还将为女性研究生和本科生提供研究，培训和指导机会，从而促进和吸引人数不足的组成部分参与STEM学科。Tamarins是小型猴子，具有相对较短的生成时间，在其地理上，他们的地理范围都受到正在进行的人为范围的范围。同时，它们显示出高度的活动能力和在人类改造的栖息地中生存的能力，从而使他们与人类共享空间，并使他的tamarins成为理想的模型，以理解栖息地碎片的进化后果。使用下一代基因组技术，该项目将使用数十个单个tamarins从整个核基因组中键入数万个标记，以确定自然和人为因素如何形成景观水平上遗传变异的模式。这将是野生灵长类动物种群结构的最早基因组研究之一，也是第一个明确检查人类诱发栖息地变化的影响的基因组研究之一。遗传数据和结果将通过科学期刊和演示来传播，并将给予环境机构以未来实施保护行动。