Speciaction and Web of Life Workshop

 

Venue: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),  in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China

 

Dates:  1 – 3 Aug 2018 (3 days)

 

Organiser: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

Registration: Registration is open until 10 June 2018

 

Sponsor: Ecology and Evolution of Plant-Animal Interaction Group and Science Communication and Training Department of XTBG

 

Fee: No registration fee will be charged, and we do not take care of accommodation (hotel and meals), and transportation etc..

 

Goals: The mechanisms of biodiversity formation and maintenance are fundamental in modern biological research, and are core research questions in several subjects, such as, evolutionary biology, ecology, conservation biology etc.. According to the “Web of Life” theory, which is different from the traditional “Tree of Life”, the boundaries between taxa are penetrable and the biodiversity is characterized as a web structure that driven by gene exchange and recombination. In recent year, lot of researches among different taxa revealed the important role of introgressive hybridization and horizontal gene exchange in speciation and adaptive evolution. To promote the “Web of Life” theory among researchers especially young researchers, the Ecology and Evolution of Plant-Animal Interaction Group and Science Communication and Training Department will organize “Speciation and Web of Life Workshop".

 

The goals of this workshop are 1) (re-)introduce the students to some of the canonical literature concerning the process of speciation and 2) discuss the new paradigm represented by the web-of-life metaphor. By the end of the workshop, we hope that the participants will have an increased awareness of both where current studies in speciation/genetic exchange fit into the history of such investigations and the ongoing shift in the paradigm used to describe the process of evolutionary diversification. 

 

Lectureer: Professor Michael L. Arnold, University of Georgia, USA

 

If you have any questions about the course, please email Gang Wang (wanggang@xtbg.org.cn) and/or Jingxin Liu (liujx@xtbg.org.cn)

 

To apply for the workshop, please visit https://www.wjx.top/jq/21841688.aspx 

 

Or scan the QR code use your smartphone

Deadline to apply: 10 June 2018

 

Tentative schedule

 

Day 1

1)  Phylogenetic Discordance (Lecture)

2)  Arnold, M.L. 2016. Divergence With Genetic Exchange. Oxford University Press. Chapters 1-3

 

Day 2

1)  Hybrid Fitness (Lecture)

2)  Reproductive Isolation and Introgression (Lecture)

3)  Arnold, M.L. 2016. Divergence With Genetic Exchange. Oxford University Press. Chapters 4-5

 

Day 3

1)  Web-of-Life and Conservation (Lecture)

2)  Human Evolution (Lecture)

3)  Arnold, M.L. and K. Kunte. 2017. Adaptive genetic exchange: A tangled history of admixture and evolutionary innovation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 32:601-611.

4)  Arnold, M.L. 2016. Divergence With Genetic Exchange. Oxford University Press. Chapters 6-8