Eva Wikberg
University of Texas at San Antonio, TX·Ecology & Evolution
When people and wild primates share the same landscape, their interactions can help or harm the health, fitness and social lives of both species. This doctoral dissertation project asks how these encounters shape social networks, the patterns of relationships among individuals, in humans and in a social non-human primate species living alongside human communities.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Social Science
Biology
- Topics
social network analysis
multispecies networks
human-animal interactions
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Analyze relationships between pairs of individuals in a human social network that shares space with a non-human primate species, using mixed-method ethnographic data.
- Measure the positions of individual humans and primates within a multispecies social network built from weighted social interaction data, with primate dominance ranks calculated using the PERC packages in R.
- Evaluate how individual traits and seasonal and spatial variation in food abundance and range overlap relate to perceived costs, benefits and network metrics for both species.
More about the research
It applies social network analysis, usually used within one species, to a combined multispecies network.
Why it matters
The work adds understanding of how humans and primates that share space affect each other's social lives, health and access to resources. Measuring these costs and benefits in both species could eventually inform how human communities and wild primates coexist.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Timothy Webster
University of Utah, UT·Ecology & Evolution
Track how individuals of a non-human primate species become integrated into social networks from birth to adulthood, using longitudinal observation and social network analysis.
Jacinta Beehner
University of Michigan, MI·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether female non-human primates use aggression and dominance to monopolize males and gain social benefits such as protection and infant care, using long-term behavioral and demographic databases.
Carolyn Parkinson
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology·Early-career
Map the real-world social networks of several bounded communities, then use behavioral and neuroimaging experiments with their members to measure how knowing others' network positions shapes thought, emotion and behavior.
The school
University of Texas at San Antonio: 10 labs on PI Pages, $172M a year on research, 129 research doctorates a year.
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