Long-term studies of individuals enable incisive investigations of questions across ecology and evolution. Here, we illustrate this claim by reference to our long-term study of red deer on the Isle of Rum, Scotland. This project has established many of the characteristics of social organization, selection, and population ecology typical of large, polygynous, seasonally breeding mammals, with wider implications for our understanding of sexual selection and the evolution of sex differences, as well as for their population dynamics and population management. As molecular genetic techniques have developed, the project has pivoted to investigate evolutionary genetic questions, also breaking new ground in this field. With ongoing advances in genomics and statistical approaches and the development of increasingly sophisticated ways to assay new phenotypic traits, the questions that long-term studies such as the red deer study can answer become both broader and ever more sophisticated. They also offer powerful means of understanding the effects of ongoing climate change on wild populations.

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个人长期研究的非凡价值：朗姆岛红鹿项目的例子

对个体的长期研究能够对生态学和进化论问题进行深入的调查。在这里，我们通过对苏格兰朗姆岛马鹿的长期研究来说明这一说法。该项目确立了大型、一夫多妻制、季节性繁殖哺乳动物的许多社会组织、选择和种群生态学特征，对我们对性选择和性别差异进化及其种群动态的理解具有更广泛的影响和人口管理。随着分子遗传学技术的发展，该项目已转向研究进化遗传问题，也在该领域开辟了新的领域。随着基因组学和统计方法的不断进步以及检测新表型性状的日益复杂的方法的发展，马鹿研究等长期研究可以回答的问题变得更加广泛和更加复杂。它们还提供了了解持续气候变化对野生种群影响的有力手段。