A Brief Introduction of Biodiversity Science, Fudan University (IBSFU)

A Brief Introduction of the subject of Ecology and the Institute of Biodiversity Science, Fudan University (IBSFU)

The subject of Ecology is the key subject of Fudan University and one of the first group of biology teaching bases of the Ministry of Education. It includes the Department of Environmental and Resources Biology, (DERB), the Institute of Biodiversity Science of Fudan University (IBSFU), Herbarium of Fudan Uiversity (FU), Museum of zoology and 3 subjects for master’s doctoral and postdoctoral programs. DERB and IBSFU have many modern instruments and a group of outstanding young scientists. Most of them have doctoral degrees and have been the research leaders of many research areas. A lot of visiting professors from other universities and institutes, such as Prof. De-yuan Hong, Prof An-ming Hu, Prof Hong-ya Gu, Prof Song Wang, Prof Ru-song Wang and Prof Jie-ming Jin, often research and teach the Ph.D programs in IBSFU.There are more than 100,000 specimen in Herbarium and more than 2000 species of animal in Museum. DERB and IBSFU have accept many projects from the national funds of natural science and other Ministries and Provinces. These years, they had research funds 1000,000 yuan per year on average, published more than 200 papers and won more than 10 prizes at national and provincial levels.

IBSFU is China’s first institute of its field. Biodiversity science is committed to the teaching and research in biodiversity, on which human beings depend heavily for survival and development, is now faced with tremendous pressure with population explosion, rapid economic development and growing human demands. The present extinction, for example, is 100-1000 times the speed of the species extinction without human interference, and this has caused great concern among governments worldwide and received high public attention.

Since it was founded in 1996, IBSFU has focused its research on such areas as:

urbanization as a cause of biodiversity loss and its impact on the environment;
species endangering process and mechanisms to which are subjected;
the resistant gene diversity of the wild close relatives of economic crops;
biodiversity information systems;
ecological service functions.

Two leading scientists, Prof.Chen Jiakuan and Prof. Wu Qianhong, are in charge of the research on conservation biology of main endangered plants in China, and the research on biodiversity conservation in key regions of China, which have both been sponsored by NNSF (National Natural Science Fund), and are listed as major projects for the 8^th and the 9^th Five-Year Plan, respectively. They have also been undertaking a project from Shanghai Environmental Protection Agency on the setting up of Shanghai biodiversity database and protection strategies. Their publications in influential domestic and overseas journals are nearly two hundred papers.