Lecturer: Jürgen Gadau
Fields: Sociobiology, Genomics and Epigenetics of adpative traits
Content
I plan to give an overview on social evolution in animals and humans from an evolutionary and genomic/epigenetic point of view. I plan three sessions, the first will give a general overview on genotype/epigenotyp – phenotype mapping, the second will highlight and introduce epigenetic regulations and inheritance and finally I will discus the similarities and differences between social insects and humans, i.e. understand the key processes and mechanisms that sustain cooperation in these hypersocial organisms.
1. From Genotype to social Phenotypes
2. The role of epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity for individualisation and social evolution
3. Humans the other animals
Literature
- Frank Seebacher and Jens Krause: Epigenetics of Social Behaviour
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534719301399
- Robert Boyd
- A different kind of animal
Lecturer
I received my PhD from the University of Würzburg in 1997, spent 2 years as a PostDoc at UC Davis in California and habilitated between 1999 and 2004 in Würzburg (Zoologie). From 2004-2016 I was professor at Arizona State University before I accepted a W3 Professorship for Molecular Evolution and Sociobiology at the University Münster. I work on the genetic and epigenetic architecture and evolution of adaptive traits in social and solitary Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps). Since 2021 I am also dean for the biology faculty.
Affiliation: University of Münster
Homepage: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Evolution/molevolsocbio/