PI Highlight
Dr. Erin P. Riley
Dr. Erin Riley is an associate professor, graduate advisor, and interim chair of SDSU’s Department of Anthropology. Drawing from primatology, conservation ecology, and environmental and sociocultural anthropology, Dr. Riley’s research focuses on primate behavioral and ecological flexibility in the face of anthropogenic change and the conservation implications of the ecological and cultural interconnections between human and nonhuman primates.
Since its inception in the 1950s, field primatology was predicated on the study of nonhuman primates in their natural, undisturbed environments. What is implied by “natural environments” is an ecological context free from human influence. Some primatologists, such as Dr. Riley, have found this stipulation problematic. Firstly, in many areas around the world, the fossil record demonstrates that ecological sympatry characterized much of the primate and human evolutionary past. Moreover, in contemporary times, it is becoming increasingly difficult to encounter primate populations that are indeed free from human impact. Accepting this reality challenges us to adopt a new understanding of community ecology that includes the human dimension and enables us to more fully explore patterns of primate (both human and nonhuman) adaptability in the face of environmental change.
These areas of inquiry encapsulate the essence of “ethnoprimatology” – a recent approach in primatology spearheaded by a diverse set of anthropologists, including Dr. Riley. In a nutshell, ethnoprimatology is the study of the multifaceted ways the histories, ecologies, lives, and livelihoods of humans and primates intersect. Dr. Riley’s primary interest in ethnoprimatology has been the interface of humans and macaque monkeys. Macaques are excellent subjects for ethnoprimatological research for two reasons: 1) the genus Macaca is the most ecologically and behaviorally flexible of the nonhuman primate genera; and 2) macaques and members of our own genus, Homo, have a long history of ecological sympatry that continues today across a broad array of contexts.
Since 2000, Dr. Riley has been conducting field research in Sulawesi, Indonesia where she has collaborated with her graduate students and Indonesian colleagues to examine the impact of anthropogenic habitat alteration on macaque ecology and behavior, the causes and consequences of crop raiding behavior, the intersubjective relationship between researchers and macaques during the process of habituation, and cultural conceptions of primates, nature, and conservation.
She also has a project in Florida where she has been examining the interface between boaters and a free-ranging population of rhesus macaques along the Silver River.
Dr. Riley’s research is funded by the National Geographic Society/Waitt Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the American Institute for Indonesian Studies, and San Diego State University. Her research reaches multiple fields with notable publications in American Anthropologist, American Journal of Primatology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Current Zoology, and Oryx. She is currently working on two books, “Ethnoprimatology: A Practical Guide to Research on the Human-Primate Interface” with co-editors Agustin Fuentes and Kerry Dore, and the sole-authored “The Promise of Contemporary Primatology” to be published by Left Coast Press.
Dr. Riley can be reached at epriley@mail.sdsu.edu or 619-594-8628.