Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reproductive trade-offs in female primates

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

Female primates, including women, expend considerable energy during pregnancy and breastfeeding, limiting the energy that can be allocated to other physiological functions, and potentially shaping long-term trends in well-being, aging, and mortality. This doctoral dissertation project will investigate the physiological impacts of female reproduction for wild female chimpanzees, using non-invasively collected demographic, hormonal, genetic, parasitic, and viral data in two chimpanzee populations. Chimpanzees, our closest living primate relatives, provide an important comparative model of female reproductive trade-offs, especially given that human studies are confounded by fertility control, infant supplementation, medical care, and childcare assistance. The information generated by this research will help to inform the basic biology underlying women's health. The student co-PI will conduct science education and conservation outreach through a number of venues, including mobile discovery stations on primates and parasites designed for K-9 school children from communities that are underrepresented in the STEM fields, and workshops on project outcomes and the importance of field guides in scientific research and chimpanzee conservation. Energy allocation to producing and caring for infants is predicted to generate costs for long-term health and survival in humans and non-human primates, and these types of trade-offs are potentially important for understanding modern human life history. This proposal tests three hypotheses in wild chimpanzees, including that 1) high costs of reproduction will negatively impact immune function in female chimpanzees; 2) females with higher available energy experience reduced immunological costs of reproduction, and, 3) female genetic quality mediates immunological costs of reproduction. Two parasite systems will be used as proxies for immune function, including a helminth and a virus. This study is highly interdisciplinary, offers novel data on age-associated patterns of disease in chimpanzees, and potentially targets factors salient to the evolution of extended lifespan in humans.