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Professor Jacobus J. Boomsma, member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and Professor at the University of Copenhagen, was invited to deliver an academic presentation at the Shipai campus of SCNU on December 5.
As part of the "New Century Forum" academic lecture organized by the School of Life Sciences at SCNU, Professor Boomsma shared his insights and research findings on the adaptive evolution of social insects in the report titled "Asking Darwinian questions to colonies of ants and termites". Over 150 faculty members and students attended the event.
During the lecture, Professor Boomsma provided a detailed introduction to how natural selection shapes social organization and the adaptive mechanisms of ant societies, sharing his latest discoveries in this field. His presentation not only took the audience on a journey through the long and fascinating history of animal evolution and adaptation, but also sparked great interest in evolutionary biology and ecology research.
Following the presentation, Professor Boomsma engaged in interactive discussions with the audience, addressing questions about the evolution of ant social living and adaptive design through natural selection. The audience actively participated with questions, which Professor Boomsma patiently answered, creating a vibrant atmosphere. The exchange not only deepened the audience's understanding of the presentation content but also fostered intellectual exchange among faculty and students from different research backgrounds.
Additionally, Professor Boomsma provided special instruction on how to reveal deep-seated potential conflicts between the sexes, between castes, and between hosts and mutualistic symbionts from a gene's-eye perspective, and discussed the origins of major evolutionary transitions in organizational complexity. Through this guidance, Professor Boomsma helped researchers more clearly map out their research paths and strengthened their confidence and determination in facing research challenges.
Many graduate students remarked that Professor Boomsma's lecture deepened their understanding of the extraordinary evolutionary potential of superorganism structures and provided clearer direction for their future research. Faculty members also noted that Professor Boomsma's research progress offers valuable inspiration for guiding their teaching and scientific work.
Professor Jacobus Boomsma is a world-leading evolutionary biologist, currently serving as Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. His primary research focuses on using theories and tools from evolutionary biology, genetics, and ecology, with ants as the core model system, to reveal the fundamental principles underlying the most complex and fascinating phenomena in the living world, including cooperation, conflict, eusociality, and superorganisms. To date, he has published 317 peer-reviewed papers, including more than ten articles in Cell, Science, and Nature, as well as numerous important papers in top international journals such as Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and PNAS. Professor Boomsma's pioneering research has laid the foundation for theories of social evolution and superorganisms, having a profound impact on expanding our understanding of life's complexity.
Source from School of Life Sciences
Translated by Chenxu Ye
Proofread by Edwin Baak
Edited by Li Jianru
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