In the early morning of June 2nd, Science published a long article on the latest research results of our golden monkey research team, “Adaptations to a cold climate promoted social evolution in Asian colobine primates”. The research team’s latest research result, is the first to systematically reveal the mystery of primate social evolution. The cover image of this issue of Science shows a representative of Asian colobine primates, the Qinling golden monkey, courtesy of a research team from Northwest University.
Xiaoguang Qi, a professor from the School of Life Sciences, and Jinwei Wu and Lan Zhao, postdocs, are co-first authors of the paper, with Xiaoguang Qi, Baoguo Li, a professor in our School, Dongdong Wu, a researcher at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Cyril C. Grueter, a professor at the University of Western Australia, as co-corresponding authors, and Northwest University as first author organization.
This study integrates the multidisciplinary approaches of animal behavior, ecology, geology, and comparative genomics to reveal the process, dynamics, and genetic basis of the evolution of the complex social system of Asiancolobine primates over 8 million years. The reviewers of Science commented, “The authors have completely retraced the social evolutionary history of Asian colobine primates through a multidisciplinary intersectional approach and provided an integrated resolution of their ecogenesis and genetic basis, which is unprecedented in the study of both primates and vertebrates and opens up a new avenue in the field of social evolution.”
Another long paper, “Phylogenomic analyses provide insights into primate evolution”, of which Qi is a co-corresponding author, was also published in Science at the same time.
