Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effects of nutritional ecology and feeding competition on growth and development

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Learning what to eat, how, and where to find food are significant challenges that arise over the course of development. Such challenges can also be social, when individuals have to compete with others for access to food. Yet how feeding competition affects food choice and developmental outcomes is poorly understood, particularly in scenarios where food is abundant and distributed evenly across an environment.

This doctoral dissertation research tests how variation in feeding ecologies, including food competition, affects food choice and developmental outcomes among wild juvenile non-human primates inhabiting changing ecological and demographic environments. Results contribute to existing conservation management plans and provide concrete training opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students. Results will be disseminated widely to academic and non-academic audiences.

The proposal merges theory from nutritional ecology and life history to investigate the significance of feeding competition among developing non-human primates, who lack the foraging competence of adults. Major objectives include investigating: 1) variation in food nutritional properties along ecological gradients; 2) development of adult-like foraging competence; and 3) impacts of feeding competition on dietary development of infant and juvenile individuals.

The researchers integrate novel and long-term data on food nutritional properties and feeding behavior sampled across a diversity of habitat types. They collect novel nutritional data from plant food samples as well as feeding data generated through long-term monitoring and new behavioral observations. Results inform understanding of the evolution of primate juvenile periods, by improving our understanding of how immatures are impacted by feeding competition, even in contexts where food is apparently abundant.

Further, this research generates insights regarding developmental responses to changes in ecology, which are important for predicting population dynamics and associated implications for conservation efforts.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.