Workshop: CSViewer for Analysts – A big data approach to Cayo Santiago Rhesus macaque colony: A workshop on a software application to generate a user-friendly interface and to appropriate data analytical tools

The Cayo Santiago (CS) Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) colony has been kept for 85 years in the Caribbean Area and has become a great resource in biomedical and anthropological sciences. Animal individual information such as sex and age as well as matrilineal pedigree have been well recorded. An NSF project aimed at integrating related data on different aspects for the studies of growth and development, acclimation and adaption, and health and diseases as a non-human primate model resulting in a comprehensive database with innate and added analytical tools, CSViewer, a unique Knowledge Model which enables data mining, data analysis, and modeling support for hypothesis-based investigations based on census information and historic record of the monkey colony, and metric and non-metric data collected from derived skeletal collections. This workshop will not only highlight the usefulness and potential of CSViewer with essential visualization features in population dynamics, mating and inbreeding patterns, and long terms trends of health and diseases through cross-referencing data from different sources, but also allow hands-on experience in assessing the Cayo Santiago Rhesus colony in more creative ways. Moreover, this workshop will demonstrate how computer and big data sciences are useful in studying new questions, or from new perspectives in many anthropological fields.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 1:00-5:00pm.

Organized by Qian Wang (Texas A&M University School of Dentistry) and Martin Zhao (Mercer University)