Your 1997 Membership Renewal Form is enclosed. Please return this form with your dues to Francis Webster. Note that you can now pay by credit card if you wish - VISA, Master Card or Discover. Note also that there has been a modest dues increase.
If you wish, your membership data (address, e-mail address, research interests) to appear on the ISCE website, please check the appropriate box on the Membership Renewal form. If you do not check this box, this information will not be put on the web.
Anyone interested in serving as Secretary of the Society, please submit your name to one of the Executive Committee members. I will be stepping down as Secretary at the next Annual Meeting. I will be happy to work with anyone wishing to take on this job.
Business Meeting Notes - Prague, 1996.
The Annual Business meeting of the ISCE was called to order at 5:25 PM on August 22, 1996 by President John Pickett. The Society Officers, several Councilors, and about 40 members were present.
President Pickett announced that the Executive Committee of the Society, in an effort to support the work of its younger scientists, has established an endowment for support of student travel to annual meetings. He also announced that effective immediately the EC with the support of the Councilors had voted to increase annual dues. Dues for Regular members will increase to $35, for Student members to $15, and for Regular members from "resource poor" countries to $15 and $10 for Students. The 1997 membership renewal form will reflect these changes. He stated that a subcommittee was being formed to investigate ways to increase financial support for the Society. He also stated that, as a cost saving measure, the EC and Councilors wish to abolish Life Membership as a future option.
Pickett pointed out the importance of Society support for the Journal of Chemical Ecology. He asked members to participate in the review process when asked and to provide "critical reviews of manuscripts. He asked members to cite JCE papers as possible in order to raise the "impact" factor of the Journal.
Francis Webster gave the Treasurer's Report. He stated that the newly established endowment funds would come from the following sources: $30,000 from our Life Membership account; $10,000 from funds previously donated by the Rothschild foundation; and $20,000 from the current ISCE working account. The goal will be to increase the Endowment to $75,000 so that the interest can be used to fund student travel. This will help stem the approximate $5000 annual loss to the Treasury. Fran noted that the membership composition is currently about 700. Of these about 100 are Life members, 300 are dues paying, and over 300 are in arrears. If the people in arrears were to pay their dues, it would reverse the current annual $5000 loss.
Comments from members included: deny registration at annual meetings to members in arrears; increase the cost of Life Membership to a reasonable level of cost; decrease the number of newsletters to 2 per year.
Since a vote of the membership is required to change the Society bylaws, Pickett asked for a motion to cease the offering of Life Memberships. It was moved and passed by a vote of 30 to 3.
The 1997 meeting in Vancouver was discussed briefly. The meeting will take place July 13-16 on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Housing will be available on campus. Murray Isman and Jeremy McNeil are members of the Symposium Committee.
Pickett announced that he is anxious to know about any follow-up activities with Latin American scientists which may have resulted from the Chile meeting. Members were asked to inform John of any such instances.
Since there were busses waiting to take members to the annual banquet, the meeting was hastily concluded at 5:55 without a report from the Secretary or Editor of the Journal of Chemical Ecology.
The 1996 meeting in Praha will remain in my memory as a landmark of conviviality and high scientific quality- formally for its high scientific quality, and informally for its social events. I am extremely pleased to assume the leadership of the Society on such a pleasant and propitious occasion.
Over the last years the ISCE has stood constantly for two values which I fully endorse. First, by holding a meeting every year in geographically and culturally diverse sites, we are encouraging contact between different groups of chemical ecologists and providing an opportunity for our membership spread all over the world to attend a meeting. Indeed, depending on the emphasis in the scientific program and the location, different subsets of our membership are able to attend meetings as well as the hard-core of "regulars". Chemical ecology is a multidisciplinary field and outstanding research is often the result of collaboration between scientists from different areas. It is my belief that many productive interactions (with people you would not have met otherwise) are initiated during the personal interactions made at our yearly meetings.
Secondly, the ISCE has been using its financial resources to support and encourage graduate students by giving several competitive travel awards each year. The ISCE is still a young society and it covers a fascinating field whose livelihood and future is in the hands of the younger scientists.
As incoming President I wish to encourage further contact between members from resource-poor and resource-rich parts of the world as well as help graduate students and post-docs integrate in the Society and benefit from the networks of contact that it offers. One of the decisions of the Executive Committee and Councilors taken at the Praha meeting was to establish an endowed fund. The interest on this will be used to guarantee the financial continuity of our student awards program. Initial contributions to this fund were made by Miriam Rothschild and Gerald Rosenthal. To increase it, we are dependent upon your donations. Please consider this possibility when paying your dues this year.
Last, but not least: thank you for trusting me to represent the ISCE.
Martine Rowell-Rahier
Our ISCE homepage on the web is getting increasing attention. If you wish, you can read the newsletter there, download a membership application, or check out the most recent table of contents page from the Journal of Chemical Ecology. Abstracts from papers presented at our most recent annual meeting are also published on the homepage. Hopefully the Prague abstracts will have replaced the Chile ones by the time you read this! Watch the site for additional information about the 1997 Vancouver Annual Meeting.
We are in the process of adding the membership list to the site. Your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and research interest can all be listed. Only your name, however, will be listed UNTIL you inform Francis Webster, the Treasurer, that you want the other information posted. You can do this by simply indicating so on your membership renewal application, or you can inform Fran by a letter or e-mail.
In the future, the use of the website for discussion groups can become a reality. I hope also that future meeting organizers will link directly to the site so that meeting registration and instant publication of abstracts will occur. Please send your suggestions for improving the homepage to me.
I will step-down from the Secretary position at the annual meeting in Vancouver. By then I will have done this job for seven years. It is time for someone new to take over. Anyone wishing to become involved in the Society and who is willing to stand for election to the position should let any member of the Executive Committee know. It is a modest amount of work, but also an enjoyable task. I will be happy to work with the new person who assumes this role. The newsletter will continue to be published three times a year in hard copy as well as on the website. Some familiarity with the INTERNET is needed.
The International Society of Chemical Ecology Homepage can be found at http://ww.cas.usf.edu/ISCE/John Romeo
The summer rains stopped and the weather was glorious for the 193 participants in the 13th annual meeting August 18-23 in Prague, Czech Republic. Scientists from 16 countries were represented with the Czech Republic, the USA, Germany, and Sweden having the largest delegations. The meeting was organized under the patronage of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Juraj Harmatha and his team of associates did a remarkable job of organization, and provided an atmosphere of good will, amusement and beauty. In addition to the 14 Plenary Lectures, 71 oral and 73 poster presentations were made. Louise Vet gave the Silverstein-Simeone Award Lecture and Kenji Mori gave the second "My Life as a Research Scientist" lecture following the example of John Pickett in 1995. There was a strong chemical emphasis throughout the meeting. Highest interest appeared to be in Symposium 2 - Chemically Mediated Interactions with 56 contributions.
In the usual vein, participants were treated to good science, much of it interdisciplinary. Old beliefs were reaffirmed and/or challenged, and a number of fresh topics appeared. There was a lot of talk about "pheromone binding proteins", "quantitative differences of natural products", "tritrophic interactions", "synthesis, transformation, translocation, and substrate specificity of plant chemicals", and the "differences between Czech and Finnish beetles". My personal favorite new words and phrases include opisthonotal, sordidin, and hyperparasitoid odor.
Among the lasting visual images of Praha are the fairy tale castles, ubiquitous music-in churches and monasteries, in the streets, and on the Charles Bridge-, immaculate subways, hoards of tourists, sparkling glass, dumplings, and exceptional beer! On to the new world. See you in Vancouver!
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Louise Vet received the 1996 Silverstein/Simeone Award at the 13th Annual Meeting of the ISCE in Prague. Dr. Vet was recognized for her innovative ecological research on behavior and semiochemical use by insects, in particular insect parasitoids. By using both an evolutionary and a mechanistic approach to host finding and selection by insect parasitoids, and by applying a method of observation and species comparison, she has developed general hypotheses on how natural enemies search for their victims, what the constraints are, and what role semiochemicals (both from the host and the plant) play in this process. Her major achievement is her leading role in developing the field of parasitoid learning, both empirically and theoretically. Her research has put the focus on variation in both behavior and stimulus. By emphasizing the importance of variation for the evolution of behavior and for population level processes, she has given an impetus to the field of chemical ecology to study the evolutionary significance and mechanisms of variability, both on the stimulus and response side.
Dr. Vet has a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Leiden and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology, Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands. She has authored more than 65 publications.
At the closing ceremony of the ISCE Annual Meeting in Prague, ISCE Silver Medal Awards were presented to Professors Kenji Mori and Jacques Pasteels. Dr. Mori, an organic chemist, at the University of Tokyo, and Dr. Pasteels, an entomologist at the University Libre de Bruxelles, were honored for years of contributions to the field of Chemical Ecology. Both are Past-Presidents of the Society. The Silver Medal is the highest honor awarded by the Society for scientific achievement.
An Honorary Medal for Merit in the Chemical Sciences was awarded to Jerrold Meinwald by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic at the Annual Meeting closing ceremony in Prague. The medal was presented by Vice-President of the Academy, Prof. Helena Illnerova. Dr. Meinwald is Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is a Past-President of the ISCE.
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| Dr. Kenji Mori | Dr. Jacques Pasteels | Dr. Jerrold Meinwald |
This year the Student Travel Award Committee received 24 applications for support to travel to the Prague meeting. The applications were reviewed and evaluated and 5 students were provided with funds. The winners and titles of their presentations are:
Marta L. Del Campo Couratier, Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University, USA.
Addiction to Dietary Constituents Affects Food Acceptance by Manduca Sexta Larvae.
Motomichi Doi, Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan.
Genetic Basis of the Sex Pheromone Production and Perception in Drosophila Ananassae and Drosophila Pallidosa.
Wilant van Giessen, Department of Entomology, Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands.
EAG Shape Analysis Across Multiple Insect Species.
Yael Heifetz, Department of Entomology, The Hebrew University, Israel.
Gregarious Behavior in Locust Nymphs is Initiated by Cuticular Hydrocarbons and Mediated by Endocrine Peptides.
Julie A. Tillman, Department of Biochemistry, University of Nevada, USA. The Role of Juvenile Hormone and Feeding in De Novo Aggregation Pheromone Production By the Pine Engraver Beetle Ips Pini (Say) (Coleoptera: Scolytidae).
These awards were presented by the Awards Committee Chairman, Juraj Harmatha, at the closing ceremony of the meeting in Praha. The Executive Committee will provide funds again in 1997 for travel to the Vancouver meeting. The establishment of a new endowment by the Society will guarantee that these awards will continue.
For 1995, the Society began with $98,302 and ended with $93,755 resulting in a deficit of $4,547. Recall that for 1994, there was a deficit of $5488. For 1995, there was a total revenue of $24,032 and total expenses of $28,580. The Society currently has a net worth of $95,941 of which $39,850 is in a checking account and $56,091 is in a broker's account. The Society's net worth will drop after the expenses for the current meeting are paid.
The Society now has ability to accept Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cards. The Society owns a credit card reader which will allow manual input of credit card numbers. The cost for the reader and to establish the account is about $475, which will be billed soon.
The accompanying report shows transactions since I assumed the Treasurer's duty. Transactions from before January 1, 1996 were conducted by Jim Nation.
| Life Members' Account | $30,000 |
| Miriam Rothschild Donation | $10,000 |
| ISCE Contribution | $20,000 |
| Student Endowment - Total | $60,000 |
| Operation Funds For ISCE | $35,941 |
| Total Funds | $95,941 |
| 1994 (DEFICIT) | $(5,488) |
| 1995 (DEFICIT) | $(4,547) |
| 1996 (PROJECTED DEFICIT) | $(6,000) |
| Life Members | 100 |
| Dues Paying | 300 |
| Members in Arrears | 300 |
| Total | 700 |
| 180 | @ | $25 | $4,500 |
| 100 | @ | $10 | $1,000 |
| 20 | @ | $5 | $100 |
| Approximate Total Dues | $5,600 | ||
President Martine Rowell-Rahier has appointed four new councilors to replace outgoing ones Drs. McAuslane, Hay, Trigo, and Mori. The new councilors are:
Ted Turlings, Institute of Plant Sciences/Entomology, Eth Zentrum/CLS, Zurich, Switzerland
Walter Soares Leal, Chemical Prospecting Lab, National Institute of Sericulture and Entomological Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Murray Isman, Department of Plant Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
John Pickett, Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, England
Councilors serve 3 year terms and are appointed from various geographical and disciplinary areas in order to provide advice to the ISCE Executive Committee.
The International Society of Chemical Ecology Homepage can be found at: www.cas.uusf.edu/ISCE/.