MaRGA Meeting, 2004: Abstracts

6: Clinical / Husbandry / Management

Development and Use of a Multi Colony Marmoset
Demographic Database as a Research Resource

D. Smucny¹, D.H. Abbott², K.G. Mansfield³, N. Schultz-Darken², M.E. Yamamoto⁴, A.I. Alencar⁴ and S.D. Tardif¹

Affiliation: ¹Southwest National Primate Research Center, San Antonio, TX; ²Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; ³New England National Primate Research Center, Harvard Medical School, Southborough, MA; and ⁴Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Department of Physiology, Natal, Brazil

Common marmosets (Callthrix jacchus) represent an important nonhuman primate model in biomedical research. Demographic and reproductive studies of captive marmosets have been limited by relatively small sample sizes, with most studies focused on a single colony. A pooled data source across different marmoset colonies provides a valuable research resource to increase sample sizes to better study topics such as demography, reproduction, aging and heritability. Since 2001, we have compiled demographic and reproductive information for five different common marmoset colonies into a large pooled database. The colonies included in the database are: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (Natal, Brazil), New England National Primate Research Center (Southborough, MA), Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Marmoset Research Center (Oak Ridge, TN), Southwest National Primate Research Center (San Antonio, TX), and Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (Madison, WI). All of these colonies have at least 8 years of breeding records available, with three of the colonies for > 13 years. As of last update, the multicolony demographic database consisted of records for over 5100 marmoset individuals, including 625 dams and 570 sires with known birthdates. For analyses, the records may be summarized with respect to each litter, for each dam (i.e., each damÕs reproductive history), as well as by colony or year. In future work, the marmoset database may be expanded and refined to include morbidity data, disease incidence and phenotype information. The multicolony database also may be used to explore differences in animal husbandry and colony management practices.