ERTC in Shanghai, China

Exploratory Round Table Conference (ERTC)

Mechanisms of Animal Behavior

Shanghai, China,

December 6-8, 2017

This was a joint conference between the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) and the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG). This year's ERTC aims for a critical review of the presently existing ideas, strategies and aspirations of behavioral biology. The results of the ERTC will serve as a background for further consideration by the CAS and MPG in regard to funding opportunities as well as future research directives or centers.

There were four main sections for presentations and discussions:

1) Quantification of Natural Behaviors

2) Organism-Environment Interaction: Behavior in Extreme Environments

3) Behavioral Genetics: From the Lab to the Field

4) Neural Circuits of Natural Behaviors

"In this workshop we aim to bring together scientists that study a broad range of organisms while applying highly resolving quantitative methods to gain a mechanistic understanding of the behavioral responses to varying ecological conditions and pressures. We hope to encourage discussion and promote research, which considers animals as integrated systems in light of genetic/genomic adaptations, and study neural mechanisms while animals are behaving in the real world."

Invited speakers included:

Thierry Aubin - CNRS, France

Iain D. Couzin - MPI Ornithology, Germany

Benjamin De Bivort - Harvard, USA

Jiulin Du - Institute of Neuroscience, CAS, China

Manfred Gahr - MPI Ornithology, Germany

Elena Gracheva - Yale, USA

Bill S. Hansson - MPI Chemical Ecology, Germany

Sheng He - Institute of Biophysics, CAS, China

Hopi Hoekstra - Harvard, USA

Hailan Hu - Zhejiang University, China

Le Kang - Institute for Zoology, CAS, China