Marie J.E. Charpentier, Postdoctoral Scholar  

Marie J.E. Charpentier

Education:
PhD, Montpellier II, France, 2004

Office Location: 127 Bio Sci Building
Office Phone: +1 919 660 7291
Email Address: marie.charpentier@duke.edu

Research Categories: I'm studying the evolution of life-history traits in primate species, using both genetic and behavioural analyses.

Current projects: Genetic background and relatedness effects on fitness in a wild primate species, Papio cynocephalus, in Amboseli, Kenya, The influence of genetical features on behaviors in free-ranging macaques, Macaca mulatta, Odors profiles in Lemur catta and genetic characteristics

Research Description: My specialty is to understand how individual genetic characteristics shape sociality and life-history traits in primate species. I am particularly interested in studying sexual selection and mate choice, mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance and inbreeding depression, and kin discrimination, and its mechanisms. I completed my doctoral research on a mandrill colony at the International Center for Medical Researches in Gabon and at the University of Montpellier II in France. Using both paternity analyses and behavioral techniques, I explored three main questions. First, I studied the relationship between male mating and reproductive success, asking whether social, genetic, and demographic factors influenced the probability of paternity by dominant male mandrills. I showed a significant skew in reproductive success towards alpha males. Particularly, I found that alpha males sired fewer offspring when they were closely related to their female partners. This last point suggested that kin discrimination could operate to avoid the costs of inbreeding and led me to study these two topics. Second, coupling behavioral observation of juvenile individuals with the established pedigree, I showed that indeed, juveniles were able to discriminate paternal kin compared to non-kin. Finally, a major question in evolutionary biology is how an individual’s genetic makeup affects its ability to survive and reproduce. I thus studied inbreeding depression in this colony. I found negative effects of inbreeding on female’s body mass, as well as on reproductive success. During the same period, I co-led a two-year project that involved releasing and tracking 40 mandrills into the wild, in Gabon. Concurrently, I completed a genetic study of the only captive population of sun-tailed monkeys (Cercopithecus solatus), housed at CIRMF, Gabon. I demonstrated both the harem nature of this provisioned population and that inbreeding depression occurred. My current central research focus involves two lines of questions. In the first, I am examining the relationship between an individual’s genotype and its social and reproductive phenotype: how genetic features (genetic quality and genetic dissimilarity) translate into complex phenotypes such as social and sexual behaviors. This work mainly involves data compilation and analysis on two long-term primate databases: (1) free-ranging rhesus macaques at Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, in collaboration with Dr. Anja Widdig and (2) wild yellow baboons in the Amboseli basin, Kenya, under the supervision of Dr. Susan Alberts. My second line of postdoctoral research with Dr. Christine Drea involves the olfactory indicators of relatedness in Lemur catta, housed at the Duke Lemur Center. We hypothesize that for olfaction to provide a mechanism of kin discrimination in lemurs, odor profiles should vary by degree of relatedness, with kin showing more similar odor profiles to one another than to unrelated individuals.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

  1. Charpentier MJE, Van Horn RC, Altmann J, Alberts SC, Paternal effects on offspring fitness in a multimale society, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 105 (2008), pp. 1988-1992  [abs].
  2. Charpentier MJE, Williams CV, Drea CM, Inbreeding depression in ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta): genetic diversity predicts parasitism, immunocompetence, and survivorship., Conservation Genetics, vol. In press (2008)  [abs].
  3. Charpentier MJE, Widdig A, Alberts SC, Inbreeding depression in primates: An historical review of methods used and empirical data, in press, American Journal of Primatology, vol. 69 (2007), pp. 1370-1386  [abs].
  4. Charpentier MJE, Peignot P, Hossaert-McKey M, Wickings EJ, Kin recognition in juvenile mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), Animal Behaviour, vol. 73 (2007), pp. 37-45  [abs].
  5. Charpentier M, Setchell JM, Prugnolle F, Wickings EJ, Peignot P, Balloux F, Hossaert-McKey M, Life-history correlates of inbreeding depression in mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), Molecular Ecology, vol. 15 (2006), pp. 21-28  [abs].
  6. Charpentier M*, Setchell JM*, Prugnolle F, Knapp L, Wickings EJ, Peignot P, and Hossaert-McKey M, Genetic diversity and reproductive success and in mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx)., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 102 (2005), pp. 16723-16728  [abs].

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