Established in 2007, the Ecological Evolution Group in the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Gardens aims to promote research and conservation of the Asian tropics within the Chinese Academy of Sciences and internationally.  Through a combination of basic research, applied conservation, local outreach and student training, we hope to have a positive impact on the future condition and management of natural forests and the communities they sustain.  We integrate experience across a wide range of scientific approaches and techniques from systematics and phylogenetics to remote sensing and genomic biology.

The conservation and management of tropical forest resources is probably the most complex of the life sciences as it strives to balance the interaction between global human socio-economic patterns and poorly understood ecological and evolutionary forces of megadiverse communities.  We are working at this interface in many ways, from using remote sensing technology to develop detailed spatial strategies and broad geographic surveys of biomass and biodiversity, from phylogenetic studies of phenotypic trait evolution to genomic sequencing projects using the latest cutting-edge DNA sequencing platforms.

We’ve grown rapidly in the past two years and the scope of our work continues to expand.  While the central themes of our work remain the same, our techniques and approaches seem to be as dynamic as the region in which we find ourselves!

To get yourself updated about this research group, please visit: http://www.ecologicalevolution.org/