Lunchtime Discovery: Monkey Health Explorer

Опубликовано: 01 Январь 1970
на канале: North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

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Monkey Health Explorer: How You Can Explore Monkey Blood Characteristics to Help Researchers

Dr. Julie Horvath, Head, Genomics and Microbiology Research Lab, NCMNS;
Research Associate Professor, NC Central University

Dr. Marianne Barrier
Lab Manager, Genomics and Microbiology Research Lab, NCMNS

Why is monkey blood relevant to you? Monkey Health Explorer is a citizen science project on Zooniverse.org that engages the public in identifying white blood cells in rhesus macaque monkeys that live on Cayo Santiago, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Drs. Horvath and Barrier will teach you what different parts of a blood sample look like so that you can participate in this project. And, similarly to what happens when you have blood drawn at the doctor’s office, you will identify cells in a sample of blood. Counting the different types of blood cells is critical to helping us understand which monkeys are healthy or sick in the population we’re studying.

We compare the health data to behavioral data to help understand how the health of monkeys affects how they behave. This will provide us information useful to understanding similar processes in humans. In addition to discussing initial findings about the health of our monkeys, we'll discuss what has worked well in engaging the public in this Zooniverse project and some of the trends in data collection.