News and Events

Past News and Events

Economic Experiments

We have now finished our round of economic experiments. However, we will be starting more in the near future. For more information, and to sign up for future sessions, please see our participation web-site. This is available both in English and in German.

Past Seminars and Workshops

Conference – Social Decision Making: Bridging Economics and Biology

CSF Conference in Moteverita, Ascona, 17th-20th April 2010. Organised by Prof. Laurent Lehmann, Dr Daniel Rankin, Claire El Mouden, Prof. Stuart West and Prof. Lorenz Goette

Summary
We are organising a meeting on "Social Decision Making", to be held on 17th–20th April 2011 in Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland. Our small conference will focus on social decision making, with an aim to bridge scientists in the fields of economics and evolutionary biology.We aim to have mix of economists and biologists, as well as both junior and senior scientists, in order to faciliate discussion and future collaborations between the two fields.

For more details, please see: http://www.socialgenes.org/evolvingeconomics/index.html

Invited Speakers
Professor Ken Binmore, Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, University College London
Professor Colin Camerer, Division of Humanities and Social Science, California Institute of Technology
Professor Alan Grafen, St John's College, Oxford University.
Professor Arnon Lotem, Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University.
Professor John McNamara, School of Mathematics, University of Bristol
Professor Paul Seabright, Université des Sciences Sociales de Toulous
Professor David W. Stephens, Deptartment of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota
Professor Peyton Young, Department of Economics, Oxford University

Social Evolution: From Theory to Data (and Back Again)

CUSO Meeting at the University of Neuchatel, 4th-5th June 2009
Organised by Dr Daniel Rankin & Dr Ralph Bergmüller

Summary
The target of the workshop will be to investigate conflict and cooperation on multiple levels of organisation, i.e. cooperation among genes, cells, organisms in groups including humans and conflict and cooperation on the level of cultural transmission. We aim at disentangling similarities and differences in the concepts and empirical study of social evolution in different fields (i.e. molecular, organismic and economic) and provide a platform to students who aim at developing a research project.

Invited Speakers
Professor Redouan Bshary, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland
Dr Andy Gardner, University of Edinburgh, UK
Dr Ashleigh Griffin, University of Oxford, UK
Dr Gilbert Roberts, University of Nottingham, UK
Professor Carel van Schaik, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Professor Claus Wedekind, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

From the Selfish Gene to Species Extinction: Levels of Selection in Evolution

ESEB 2009 Meeting in Turin, August 2009
Organised by Dr Daniel J. Rankin & Dr Kevin R. Foster

Summary
Evolution is by its very nature a hierarchical entity. Genes are arranged in individuals, which form part of groups within populations of various species. The levels of selection debate has resurfaced recently in the field of social evolution. In some part, this resurfacing has reinvigorated old debates in social evolution. However, there are also major unanswered questions, including whether there is true group adaptation in nature and how often selection acts at levels above kin groups. In particular, we are just beginning to appreciate how selection on multiple species can lead to the evolution of mutualisms, and how extinction and speciation can affect the distribution of species properties that we see in nature.

We wish to draw a range of evolutionary biologists, such as those working on speciation, ecologists interested in species extinction as well as sociobiologists interested in group and kin selection to address these questions. We also hope to foster discussion between empiricists and theorists to ask how multilevel selection can be addressed in the laboratory and the field. The renewed recent interest in the role of levels of selection in evolutionary biology has implications for all areas of evolutionary biology, particularly to those studying social evolution, mutualisms, speciation and macroevolution. We therefore expect our symposium to attract a wide range of interest from across all areas of evolutionary biology.

Invited Speakers
Professor David Sloan Wilson, University of Binghamton, NY, USA
Professor Samir Okasha, University of Bristol, UK

The Population Consequences of Adaptive Processes

ESEB 2007 Meeting in Uppsala, August 2007
Organised by Dr Daniel J. Rankin and Dr Jean-Francois le Galliard

Summary
Until recently, the population consequences of evolutionary dynamics remained relatively unexplored. However, there has been a growing body of studies that allowed a better understanding of the demographic context of evolutionary dynamics. This trend includes new models, as well as statistical and empirical methods, designed to assess the role of evolutionary mediated changes in population demography. This symposium will bring together people using very different systems and methods in an attempt to enrich our understanding of the demographic consequences of evolutionary changes in life history, morphological and behavioural traits.

Invited Speakers
Professor Maurice W. Sabelis, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics , Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Professor Nelson G. Hairston Jr., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, USA