CSBR Living Stocks: Continued Support of the Duke Lemur Center for the Study of Primate Biology and History

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Duke Lemur Center (DLC) is a unique institution dedicated to the study and care of the world's most endangered and biologically diverse primates: The lemurs of Madagascar. The DLC was founded on the principle that the study of lemurs and related primates can inform larger questions in biology such as the genetic and biological underpinnings of the human condition. Investigators and students from around the world come to Duke to study the living and fossil collections of the DLC. The DLC serves as a unique center for scientific inquiry, a hub for student activity, a nexus of knowledge, and a global partner for understanding and mitigating the Earth's escalating environmental challenges. Founded on the unifying themes of scientific inquiry, scholarship, information, and global engagement, the DLC will capitalize on recent revolutions in genomics, informatics and nanotechnology to make possible much more detailed investigation of its endangered primates and the application of these approaches for enhancing public knowledge of the scientific process. The DLC serves multiple educational communities, including the general public, K-12, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students. A multitude of opportunities exist for engagement at the undergraduate and graduate student levels. In the past five years alone, more than 400 students from 98 institutions have engaged in research and/or training activities. Lemurs are endemic to the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar, and due to their critically-endangered status, it would be impossible to recreate the taxonomic diversity of the DLC colony that presently contains 19 species. Over the past five-year period, 276 research projects led by 208 investigators from 100 institutions representing eight countries (primarily the U.S.) have been conducted at the DLC. These projects span a broad array of biological disciplines including, but not limited to, aging, behavioral ecology, biomechanics, cognition, epigenetics, life-history strategy, metabolomics, metagenomics, molecular evolution, neurophysiology, phylogeography, phylogenomics, population genetics, reproductive biology, sensory communication, speciation, and virology. During this three year project, the DLC will continue to make lemurs readily available to investigators, along with extensive collections of biological samples, decades of medical records, fossil representatives of extinct taxa, and rich life-history records. The DLC will also release a new version of the mouse lemur genome assembly, which will further enhance the research potential of the mouse lemur colony specifically, and the entire DLC colony by phylogenetic extension. In addition, the DLC will collaborate with Duke University's Center for In Vivo Microscopy, continue in vivo and ex vivo studies to produce an online multidimensional neural atlas of the dwarf and mouse lemurs. The DLC is also wholeheartedly committed to conservation activities via both ex situ captive management and in-country programs. The DLC's conservation Initiative in Madagascar has already served as a "landing pad" for numerous student and faculty researchers engaged in projects ranging from disease transmission, to behavioral ecology, to ecophysiology, to climate change. On-line access to colony inventories, demographics, metadata, research opportunities, and more is available through two web-based portals. Details on all facets of the DLC mission and activities can be found online (lemur.duke.edu).