On the morning of Jan.16, ‘ The Forum of Excellent Young Scholars From at Home and Abroad’ of South China University of Technology, Sub-Forum of School of Environment and Energy was held successfully in the meeting room B4-308,. The forum invited Dr Zhao Lei, the researcher and post doctorate of University of Kansas, the United State, to give an open lecture. The head of school, relevant teachers and students took part in this activity.

 Dr Zhao gave his report around the subject of ‘The Extinction Mechanism of Species Based on Mathematical models’. He pointed out that right now there are several severe problems in the ecosystem of Earth. For instance, not only has the extinction of species been accelerating but also the biodiversity are decreasing. Therefore, in order to devise the tactics of protecting the biodiversity and eliminating the trend of extinction, the first thing to do is to make clear what ‘The Extinction Mechanism of Species’ is. There are loads of factors which are able to lead to the extinction of species. Generally, it can be sorted into three series: the factors caused by environment; the factors caused by the nutrition connections such as predation and competition; the factors caused by the individual species itself. Dr Zhao completed his researches on three aspects on these three factors above: 1) The temperature’s influence on the extinction of fish in the stream ecosystem based on the statistics in Iceland; 2)  The extinction of one particular species ’s influence on other species in a food web based on the statistics of the energy flow between species; 3). The spatial synchronization of plankton’s ethnic density based on California’s data. These researches above have laid a solid theoretical foundation for exploring ‘The Extinction Mechanism of Species’ as well as taking the strategy of protecting the species a step further.

 The whole forum was drown in professional knowledge. The teachers and the students both discussed more in depth on their interested research fields and problems with Dr. Zhao. The atmosphere of the report was active. Through this platform, we knew latest findings and developments on our research fields, which reflected the latest developments in these fields.

 As far as we know, the basic aim of ‘Forum of Excellent young scholars at Home and Abroad’ of South China University of Technology is to invite prominent youths from home and abroad involving in discussions around international science’s research frontier and hotspots, which can enlighten each other, broaden horizons, and promote the international cooperation and connection.  

Appendix: the Introduction of the Reporter

 Graduated from North China Electric Power University in 2017 getting a PhD, Dr. Zhao Lei is a post doctorate in the University of Kansas, the United state. He has been doing researches on Theoretical Ecology, which mainly contains the protection of biodiversity as well as the mechanism of the extinction of species. He has achieved a series of professional innovative findings. Over the last three years, he has published 19 papers on SCI [he is the first author of four of them], including Ecology Letters (IF: 9.45)、Nature Climate Change (IF: 19.30)、Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (IF: 9.66) and many other top academic journals. At present he is the reviewer of Advances in Ecological Research (IF: 5.06)、Proceedings of the Royal Society B (IF: 4.94) and so on.