Guided by scientific research areas, researchers in Research Group for Conservation Ecology form a multi-disciplinary team. They belong to three sub-groups: Community and Population Ecology, Physiological and Experimental Ecology, Molecular and Genetic Ecology. Aiming at the major current ecological problems in protecting biodiversity, they focus their research mainly on the formation, maintenance, and ecosystem functions of biodiversity, the formation of the invasive potential of alien species, and the ecological effects of the invasion. They concentrate on studying the ecological processes and mechanisms of the problems concerned. They emphasize on microscopic mechanism analysis and macroscopic integration analysis in their studies.

To analyze the microscopic mechanisms, they pay special attention to the approaches of experimental ecology. At the macroscopic scale, the researchers conduct integrated studies in community ecology, ecosystem and landscape ecology, based on the needs of the nation.