Anne E. Pusey - US grants

Different primate species are characterized by differing patterns of dispersal. It is generally felt that the dispersal pattern is an adaptation which may increase the selective fitness of individuals by increasingly their likelihood of mating and hence passing their genes on to subsequent generations. Both chimpanzees and baboons are present in the Gombe Forest of Tanzania and each demonstrates a different dispersal pattern. Among chimpanzees, about half of the females leave their natal group permanently and half leave temporarily. Among the baboons, it is the males who emigrate but the age of first dispersal varies from 3 to 9 years. Additionally, some female baboons leave their natal range at the time when groups divide. In order to attempt to understand the costs and benefits of the different patterns, the PIs will cooperate with Jane Goodall in the use of her detailed field notes; notes which extend back for as much as 20 years. In addition, they will extend the studies of both species at Gombe for the next three years by direct observation. In cooperation with Tanzanian scientists, they will also test the relationship of the richness of the habitat to the dispersal patterns by initiating new studies on the plant species distributions within the ranges of each species.

This is a proposal to purchase equipment for animal behavior studies. The equipment to be obtained includes video cameras, monitors, video tracking systems, computers and additional image processing and storage devices. The equipment will allow the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior to pursue new controlled laboratory studies that had not been possible before. Research will focus on circadian rhythms, cooperative behavior, mate choice, and movement patterns. The instrumentation will enable automated monitoring of physiology, activity and coloration. Image grabbers will also be used to catalogue representative examples of behavior that can then be used to train students in classifying behavior and to ensure interobserver reliability. The University of Minnesota sponsors two programs that encourage undergraduate research: the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and a research oriented honors.

9319909 Anne Pusey In the past 30 years, Jane Goodall revolutionized our understanding of chimpanzee behavior, and in the process gave us an extraordinary perspective on ourselves and our behavioral origins. Chimpanzees are fascinating in their own right. They are one of the few mammalian species to show female dispersal and male-male cooperation, and this continuing study will provide new insights into the causes and consequences of this unusual social organization. Though less prominent than the chimp study, the Gombe baboon study is the longest and most extensive field study of any African monkey. This current research effort, in coordination with Goodall and Tanzanian collaborators, will involve three interconnecting projects. First, long-term demographic and behavioral data on chimpanzees and olive baboons will be analyzed and new data will be collected. This will include Goodall's records from the past three decades. The emphasis will be an examination of the costs and benefits of female dispersion and male sociality. In contrast, olive baboons show the social organization typical of old world monkeys, with home ranges maintained largely by the females and males moving between troops. This research effort will investigate group-level factors influencing female reproductive success, and the causes of individual variability in male reproductive success, social relationships and paternal care. The large sample sizes allow sophisticated statistical analysis of demography and social behavior. The second project involves a highly detailed survey of the diversity and distribution of vegetation in the entire park -- an area of unusual plant diversity. The vegetation studies will clarify the ecological basis of chimpanzee social organization, the importance of inter-troop competition in baboons, and will also contribute to the inventory of biodiversity in Tanzania. The third project will use DNA extracted from feces of both species to assess paternity, measure genetic relatedness and levels of inbreeding. By perfecting the extraction of nuclear DNA from feces and developing baboon-specific primers, the team will facilitate paternity studies in other primate field studies.

9407880 Packer Over the next decade, the principal investigators will extend the long-term ecological, demographic and genealogical records on lions in the Serengeti National park and Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. These populations are already among the best-studied vertebrates in the world, but lions have long life expectancies and lion population size responds slowly to ecological perturbation. Extensionof these records will have three important consequences. First, the relationship between small-scale environmental heterogeneity and local carrying capacity will be determined by collecting more complete and extensive data on survival, reproduction, and the physical growth rates of immatures. Knowledge of this relationship will make it possible to answer a wide variety of research questions, including (a) the role of territoriality in lion population regulation, (b) the effects of territoriality, familiarity and kinship on female dispersal patterns, (c) the extent to which territorial neighbors collude to pre-empt settlement by potential newcomers, and (d) the impact of post-reproductive females on the reproductive rates of their younger companions. Second, extending the long-term lion study will permit the ongoing monitoring of these populations in the face of impending ecological change. By recording population changes and patterns of physical growth, it will be possible to measure the impact of the enormous increase in human population around the Serengeti. Maintenance of the data in the Ngorongoro Crater will further elucidate the consequences of chronic inbreeding in a small population. Continued measurement of both populations will be invaluable in monitoring the effects of global climate change. Third, by maintaining the long-term records, the PI's and their collaborators will be able to incorporate highly detailed background data into cross-sectional studies that will receive funding from other sources. At the minimum, these surveys will include studies of host-parasite coe volution, endocrinology, and behavior. Not only will the lion project carry out basic research, but it will also have a practical application. The long-term lion data will be incorporated into a new GIS project in the Serengeti along with all available data collected by the Serengeti Ecological Monitoring Program.

9507423 This project will use genetic analysis to determine the patterns of paternity and male reproductive success in the chimpanzees and baboons of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. These populations have been studied under the direction of Dr. Jane Goodall for 35 and 28 years, respectively. In both species, females mate with many males, and males show a variety of mating strategies including mating at high frequencies, aggressive competition for access to females, possessive behavior, the formation of consortships, and the cultivation of special relationships with females. However, little is known of the relative effectiveness of these strategies in achieving paternity because genetic analysis has not been possible. This project will use a non-invasive procedure, the extraction of DNA from feces, to obtain genetic material for analysis. Samples from 250 baboons in five troops, and 20 chimpanzees in one community, have already been collected, and techniques for DNA extraction have been perfected. Samples will be collected from additional infants and unsampled potential parents in six baboon troops and two chimpanzee communities to yield total sample sizes of 150 infant baboons and 20 infant chimpanzees. Approximately 8 hypervariable regions of the nuclear DNA will be amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and paternity will be determined by comparing the genotypes of infants, their mothers, and potential fathers. In combination with the detailed behavioral records, knowledge of paternity will allow assessment of the effectiveness of different mating strategies. The study will provide new information about patterns mf relatedness within groups and will provide new insights into the evolution of competitive behavior and affiliative relationships in these species.

Animal Behavior Program
Nontechnical Abstract


Proposal #: 9817588
PI: Pusey, Anne
Title: Determinants of male dominance and reproductive success in wild primates



Male chimpanzees and baboons compete for dominance rank and for access to receptive females. The ultimate goal of the project is to determine how male reproductive success is influenced by such physical traits as body size, canine length and morphological symmetry and by such behavioral strategies as social dominance, alliance formation, paternal care and the cultivation of long-term relationships with females. Dr. Pusey's research will be carried out on the chimpanzees and baboons of Gombe National Park on populations that have been studied for nearly 40 years. This is an extraordinary database upon which to anchor interpretations of the results from this project. The immediate goal is to perfect techniques for paternity exclusions by extracting DNA from fecal samples and hair. Samples will be collected as part of the long-term studies at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Various extraction techniques will be tested, and human MapPairTM primers will be screened to identify genetic markers in chimpanzees and baboons that exhibit necessary levels of heterozygosity yet whose alleles are sufficiently distinguishable from humans to minimize problems associated with contamination.

Measuring the relationship between physical prowess, symmetry, dominance rank, and reproductive success will increase understanding of the evolution of sexual dimorphism and the importance of symmetry in indicating "quality." Measuring the effects of behavioral strategies will reveal the extent to which male mating competition has driven the evolution of complex social behavior. Because these genetic techniques are non-invasive, the project will greatly enhance the ability to monitor levels of inbreeding in endangered populations.

In 1960, Jane Goodall began the first long-term field study of the closest living relatives of humans, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), in Gombe National Park, Tanzania to describe their behavior by making extensive observations in their natural habitat. This study, which continues today, has made many contributions to understand chimpanzee behavior and human evolution, and has also inspired people around the world to study science and work toward wildlife conservation. Analysis of the complete observational dataset from Gombe and other field studies, such as the Kanyawara chimpanzee project, has the potential of providing new insights into many unanswered behavioral ecology questions, e.g. the influence of social relationships within the group on territorial behavior.

However, this observational paradigm is extremely labor-intensive and only a small part of the Gombe dataset has been analyzed so far. The goal of this project is to begin developing data analysis tools and techniques to reduce the time and effort required to analyze observation datasets. Expected results include a cartridge for mining concept patterns, a computationally efficient execution environment for concept pattern mining, and spatial semi-supervised learning algorithms to improve classification performance in creating maps. Expected results will not only benefit behavioral ecologists, but also contribute to research in many other spatio-temporal application domains, including location based services, transportation and epidemiology. Dissemination plans include development of instructional tools based on the Gombe data to motivate younger students to learn science and information technology as well as a workshop to increase collaboration between Computer Scientists and Behavioral Ecologists.

This project investigates whether wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) recognize and treat paternal relatives differently from other individuals. Kinship can have a profound effect on the social behavior of animals and humans. By helping and refraining from harming their kin, individuals will benefit through the process of kin selection by increasing their genetic representation in future generations. However, to achieve these benefits, individuals must be able to discriminate kin from non-kin. In group-living mammals such as primates, individuals have been shown to discriminate maternal kin from non-kin, grooming them, aiding them in aggressive contests, and avoiding mating with them, thus avoiding the deleterious consequences of inbreeding. Although individuals will also benefit by discriminating paternal kin, this ability could not be explored in wild populations until the recent advent of non-invasive genetic testing that can now identify paternal relatives. This study will investigate three questions about paternal kin discrimination in the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, Tanzania: (1) Do fathers discriminate and favor their genetic infants? (2) Do adolescent males that have left their mothers to join the adult male group preferentially associate with and receive protection from their fathers? (3) Do females discriminate and avoid mating with their fathers and paternal siblings as well as their maternal relatives? Genetic relationships will be established by analysis of genetic markers detected in DNA collected from fecal samples. Data on behavioral interactions will be extracted from the 44 year archive of field notes collected during Dr. Jane Goodall's study of the Gombe chimpanzees and stored in the Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies at the University of Minnesota, as well as new field data collected during the project. Demonstration of paternal kin discrimination in chimpanzees will provide support for the general importance of kinship in social behavior, a matter of current debate. The study will fill an important gap in our understanding of the factors influencing the behavior of our closest living relative. Evidence of paternal kin discrimination in chimpanzees that live in patrilineally based societies will complement recent evidence from matrilineally based societies, extending the generality of the phenomenon. The study will also stimulate future research on the mechanisms involved in kin discrimination.

In terms of its broader impact, the project will contribute to the education of both university students and the general public. It will employ both graduate and undergraduate students, actively recruited from underrepresented groups, and introduce them to the excitement of research on a species relevant to understanding human evolution. An interactive page on the Center for Primate Studies website www.discoverchimpanzees.org will allow the general public to read updates about ongoing field research and pose questions to the researchers. Web activities will be developed to explain kin selection, and paternity determination, and games will illustrate kin recognition, and inclusive fitness. Educational programs showcasing the project's research will also be developed with Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago) and made available to Minnesota zoos. Research activities in Tanzania will employ and educate local people, and contribute to the conservation of an important endangered species.