The discipline of ecology has the right of awarding the master degree in 1983 and the doctor degree in 1991. In 2001, ecology is authorized as the state key discipline by Ministry of Education.

        The discipline of ecology has three research areas including animal ecology, plant ecology and evolutionary ecology.

        Our faculties have won one Second Class Prize of the National Natural Science, two Second Class Prizes of National Teaching Achievement, two First Class Prizes of Science and Technology at the Provincial and Ministry levels, one First Class Prize and two Second Class Prizes of Provincial Teaching Achievement, 28 National Patents, 15 applied and translated patents. In addition, our faculties have taught three National Level Excellent Courses, and published three teaching books that belong to the "Twelve Five-Year" National Planning Teaching Materials by MOE.

        Our discipline has focused on the big and important questions during the substantial social and economic development of our country, as well as urgent ecology issues in local business. Research groups of this subject have undertaken scientific projects with a total cost of 160 million Chinese yuan. These projects include one "National Distinguished Young Scholar Fund", three "National Outstanding Young Scholar Fund" and 14 "National Science Foundation (NSFC) Key Program Fund".

        There are a total of 21 highly cited (top 3% citation rank) papers that have been published in this subject. Among the 20 representative papers that have been published on international journals, there are five papers with a journal impact factor (IF) higher than 10, and 12 papers with a journal IF higher than 5. There are a total of 10 SCI papers published on domestic journals.

        The entire team of Ecology Research at Zhejiang University is now steadily marching towards the world's top level of research capacity with great passion and historic sense of mission.