2018 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Primate and parasite community assemblages as indicators of a transitioning environment
| Project/Area Number |
16H06181
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| Research Institution | Kyoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | Primatology / parasitology / community ecology / host-parasite ecology / epidemiology / conservation |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
FY2018 saw multiple successes in this project. The largest was that the graduate student working on the project (Liesbeth Frias) received her DSc degree after successfully defending a thesis based on this work. Five manuscripts have already been published as a direct or indirect result of the project - on various aspects of primate-parasite diversity in Borneo and around the world. We also conducted two sampling seasons in the Kinabatangan region and recovered more than 600 additional fecal samples, many of which have already been processed and examined. We expanded our study to protozoan parasites in primates and are preparing a manuscript based on this work. We are seeing impacts of primate diversity and anthropogenic influences on parasite diversity and distribution.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
In FY2017, we reported delays in this project because of difficulties accessing the field site (threat of piracy) and the lack of a renewed export license. However, in FY2018 we made up for lost ground. First, we received an export license that allowed us to transport samples back to our lab in Japan and continue working on them. Second, we involved a local Sabahan graduate student in the project, who was able to visit the field site twice to collect large numbers of samples and use new techniques to analyze them. Third, KUPRI graduate student Liesbeth Frias completed her DSc work on this project and received her degree, meaning that much of the previous data was analyzed and now published. We are thus back on track and continue to work on samples collected in this and other years.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
FY2019 will largely be dedicated to examining the parasitological material now in our lab at KUPRI, and developing the results for publication in international scientific journals and presentation at international conferences. The PI (Andrew MacIntosh) will present results at multiple conferences in FY2019, as well as return to Sabah to disseminate our results to local counterparts/institutions. We also aim to use our data to develop multidimensional networks involving parameters specific to both hosts and parasites, and use parasite material collected to create genetic linkages among parasites sharing the same set(s) of hosts. These results will go toward understanding the ecological networks in the study region and the potential influence of anthropogenic activities on them.
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