Crystal Riley Koenig

Southern Utah University | SUU · Master of Interdisciplinary Studies Program; History Sociology Anthropology

Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) are known for their ability to thrive in a wide variety of habitats, including urban areas. Singapore is an island city-state that has experienced rapid deforestation and urbanisation over the past several decades. These processes have led to the loss of most of Singapore's large mammalian species, but lon...

Long-tailed macaques commonly live near human settlements in Southeast Asia and Singapore is one example of such an interface. In 2011 and 2012, we conducted a census for Singapore’s National Parks Board (NParks), during which we collected behavioral, demographic, and ranging data. We used these data to examine how the presence of humans and access...

Documentaries are the primary means by which many people observe the behavior of wild primates. By influencing lay-person perceptions of wild primates, documentaries could impact viewer conservation-related beliefs and behaviors and, therefore, the well-being of wild primates. To investigate such portrayals, we examined documentaries depicting the...

Primate nature documentaries have been popular with audiences since their inception in the early 1900s. Audiences trust primate documentaries, but scholars are concerned about how documentaries sometimes misrepresent primates. We provide an analysis of the history of primate documentaries, with a focus on how and why misrepresentation happens. We s...

Documentary films are intended to engage a broad audience and can be effective outreach tools for raising awareness of global biodiversity and conservation issues. We screened 210 films and recorded the duration that each primate species was on screen to evaluate their representation in documentaries and to assess factors potentially driving biases...

There is mounting evidence to suggest that short telomere length (TL) increases an organism’s susceptibility to disease and accelerates aging. However, it is not well understood why these effects do not select for longer telomeres. The ‘thrifty telomere’ hypothesis suggests one possibility: while longer telomeres improve an organism’s ability to re...

Nonhuman primate appearance and behavior can be better understood through documentary footage than through verbal explanation alone. Many college instructors show primate documentary films in their courses, but little research has evaluated primate documentaries as teaching tools. We sought to determine the prevalence of documentary use in teaching...

To what reference point(s) do third parties calibrate punishments to be inflicted upon unknown wrongdoers? We introduce a novel method that allows direct comparison of preferred punishments (and compensations) to victim loss and perpetrator gain. In two experiments, minimalist scenarios indicated various monetary gains for a thief and costs for a v...

Some species of macaques successfully survive in urban habitats. These city-dwelling macaques typically eat more human food, spend less time feeding, have larger group sizes, and differ in physical health compared to their non-urban counterparts. As South Asia becomes increasingly urban, the number and size of urban macaque populations will increas...

Understanding population dynamics is crucial to understanding current and future health care needs and designing systems to meet those needs. In this paper, we provide a methodological approach to investigate population dynamics in a system dynamics model configurable to initialise in dynamic equilibrium or disequilibrium. We then use the model to...

Direct observations of predation on primates are rare, in part because the presence of observers deters potential predators. We observed domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) kill and take away a juvenile long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis), presumably for consumption, in Singapore’s Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. We describe the event and reac...

Many nations have rapidly ageing populations and consequently face important health care policy issues, including a need to address the care and treatment of individuals afflicted with ageing-related dementia. To help inform policymakers in Singapore concerned with dementia, we constructed a system dynamics model that represents changing population...

This book is an unusual departure from the typical volume intended to communicate science to a popular audience. In graphic novel format, the authors tell the stories of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas in their early days as researchers of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei), and Bornean orangutans (Po...

Macaques and humans have been important to each other throughout history. Macaques have been featured in visual and performing arts, literature, and religious texts. They have been the focus of tourism and of naturalistic observation. They have been pets, biomedical research subjects, and coconut pickers. Macaques have also been pests: crop raiders...

Objective: To estimate the expected weight gain through midlife for those in a given BMI category in young adulthood. Design and methods: Group-based trajectory modeling and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data from 1990 to 2008 were used to quantify weight trajectories through midlife for 10,038 young adult men and women stratified b...

Aim: To obtain experts' estimates of the number of non-medical care hours required by older Singaporeans at different stages of ageing-related dementia, with low or high behavioural features. Methods: Experts on dementia in Singapore attended one of two meetings where they provided estimates of the number of care hours required for individuals a...

Assessing methodological quality is a necessary activity for any systematic review, including those evaluating the evidence for studies of medical test performance. Judging the overall quality of an individual study involves examining the size of the study, the direction and degree of findings, the relevance of the study, and the risk of bias in th...

With rapid aging, Singapore faces an increasing proportion of the population with age-related dementia. We used system dynamics methodology to estimate the number and proportion of people with mild, moderate, and severe dementia in future years and to examine the impact of changing family composition on their likely living arrangements. A system dy...