Source: College of Ecology and Evolution, School of Life Sciences
Written by: Prof. Hong PANG and Dr. Yang LIU
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

From June 29 to July 3, 2014, the International Workshop on Social Evolution was held in SYSU’s Heishiding Field Station in Fengkai county of northwest Guangdong province. Organized by Prof. Hong PANG, Dr. Yang LIU and Dr. Peng ZHANG, the workshop was supported by College of Ecology and Evolution, School of Sociology and Anthropology, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Biodiversity, Sun Yat-sen University. The workshop brought together about 50 participants from 22 institutions of 10 countries. Prof. Wensheng SHU, Deputy Dean of School of Life Sciences and Dean of College of Ecology and Evolution, addressed the opening ceremony.


Social behaviours, involving interactions with conspecifics, is a basic feature in the lives of animals and humans. Under this concept, both conflict and cooperation drive complex social behaviours. Understanding social evolution is a source of constant fascination to many biologists. The rapid advancement of state-of-the-art research tools such as comparative phylogenetic analyses, and neurogenomics has opened a field of new possibilities to understand the function, mechanism and evolution of social behaviours. This workshop was organized in order to provide opportunities for students to interact with international leading researchers in the fields.

The keynote speakers of the workshop included Prof. Tamas Szekely (University of Bath, UK), Prof. Michael Jennions (Australian National University, Australia), Prof. Gerald Heckel (University of Bern, Switzerland), Prof. Dingzhen LIU (Beijing Normal University, China), Dr. Hope Klug (University of Tennessee, USA), Dr. Michael Huffman (University of Kyoto, Japan) and Prof. Antony Dean (Sun Yat-sen University). 15 junior researchers, including master and PhD students, postdocs in the discipline of Evolution, Ecology and Sociobiology presented their works. Three roundtable discussions were held to discuss modern concepts, recent research progress and advanced skills in social evolution. The participants shared their research experience in a variety of animal systems including insects, fishes, birds and mammals. Most importantly, it was great to see networks development between Chinese and international researchers. All participants also visited Heishiding Nature Reserve, which is one of the reference locations of Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) global network.