Richard McElreath
What I Do
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
Member, Graduate Groups in Ecology, Animal Behavior, and Population Biology
Trainer, Collaborative Learning at the Interface of Mathematics and Biology (CLIMB) program
Research Overview
I am an evolutionary ecologist who studies humans. My main interest is in how the evolution of fancy social learning in humans accounts for the unusual nature of human adaptation and extraordinary scale and variety of human societies. Humans are more widespread and successful than any other vertebrate. Simultaneously, humans are unlike any other animal in that we cooperate in very large groups of unrelated individuals. I and my colleagues use formal evolutionary models, experiments and ethnographic fieldwork to address these puzzles.
I also have strong interests in general evolutionary ecology, especially the evolution of social behavior.
Contact
mcelreath@ucdavis.edu
Tel: (530) 752-2660; Fax: (530) 752-8885
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, California 95616, USA
Curriculum Vitae
You can download my somewhat-current CV here
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Book now in print
Rob Boyd and I have written a book, "Mathematical Models of Social Evolution: A Guide for the Perplexed," which is an introduction to formal models of social evolution. We target readers who have modest training in math. This means we actually show you the steps needed to derive well-known results, rather than taunting the reader with "it is easy to show..." The book is now out from University of Chicago Press. If you are interested in taking a look at the book, the first chapter is available here.
There has been a nice surge of new introductory books in this area. I've made a small list to help people browse.
HBE at UCD
A selective reading list used to prepare our graduate students in human behavioral ecology breadth requirements. HBE@UCD
Courses
Teaching 2007-2008
Fall: ANT 122A (Economic Anthropology), ANT/ESP 298 (Modeling Data)
Winter: ANT 261 (Modeling the Evolution of Social Behavior)
Spring: ANT 105 (Evolution of Societies and Cultures)