NEWSLETTER
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL ECOLOGY
- Secretary/Editor's Message
- Update on the 21st Annual Meeting of the ISCE
- 2006 ISCE Silver Medal Award Winners
- Election Results 2005
- Upcoming Course
- Books of Interest
The ISCE Newsletter is published
triannually, normally in October, February, and June. It is financed through
member contributions. None of the material contained herein may be reprinted
without the proper written acknowledgment of the editor. Address all correspondence
and newsletter submissions to the editor (Stephen Foster,
stephen.foster@ndsu.nodak.edu).
Deadline for the next issue is September 15, 2005.
The
21st Annual Meeting of the International Society of Chemical Ecology is
just over a month away. As you all know, this year’s meeting is
being principally organized by Jeff Aldrich and will be held in Washington
DC. Many of you will have already made your travel plans, but if you are
still tossing up as whether to go or not, I urge you to go! The meeting
will be a rewarding one, not only for the tremendous program of invited
speakers that Jeff has assembled (see below), but also because Washington
DC is a fascinating and culturally exciting city, with world class museums
and restaurants. Accompanying persons, in particular, will be spoiled
for choice of activities.
The votes have been cast, tallied, and the winners decided! This year, we had an excellent turnout of voters for the various Executive and Council elections. The races for all the positions, with the exception of Treasurer (in which Ken Haynes was the sole candidate!), were very close, but in the end Gary Blomquist was elected as Vice-President, Ken Haynes as Treasurer, and Eduardo Barata, Anna-Karin Borg-Karlson, Hiroshi Honda and Joachim Ruther have been elected as the four councilors. My congratulations to each of you! You should all plan on attending the Council meeting on the afternoon of 23rd July. I will send you a draft agenda shortly. Also, I would like to extend my thanks to Steve Teale who will be retiring as Treasurer during the Annual Meeting. Steve has done a great job in enhancing the financial resources of the Society as well as handling all the membership issues.
Finally, the Society received two
outstanding nominations for the ISCE Silver Medal award for 2006 –
the Society’s most prestigious honor. The Council’s vote for
these two nominees was split equally. In an extraordinary decision, the
Executive decided that both these nominees were highly deserving of the
award and that two Silver Medals would be awarded in 2006. My congratulations
to John Hildebrand and Cam Oehlschlager!
See you in Washington DC!
Stephen Foster
Secretary, ISCE
The
21st Annual Meeting of the International Society of Chemical Ecology will
be held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., July 23-27, 2005.
On-line registration and abstract submission are open at www.ChemEcol.us;
and a link has recently been added to the website for those interested
in sharing a room. The most convenient airport to the Omni-Shoreham Hotel
is Reagan National.
Contributed papers and posters will be accepted through July 15th. Several corporate sponsors have been enlisted for the meeting, and these sponsors will more actively participate in our meeting than ever before. The program is organized around special lectures and four symposia as follows:
Program Outline:
Saturday, 23rd:
Afternoon: Registration
ISCE Council Meeting
Evening: Opening reception & preview of 2006 ISCE meeting in Barcelona, Spain (Prof. Angel Guerrero, Dept Biol. Org. Chem., Barcelona, Spain)
Sunday, 24th:
Morning: Welcome & Introductions: Dr. Phyllis Johnson (Director, Beltsville
Agricultural Research Center)
Special Lecture: Dr. Robert Davis (Molecular Plant Pathology Laboratory, Beltsville, Maryland): “Spiroplasma kunkelii – Helical, motile, wall-less, plant pathogenic bacterium: A model of obligate parasitism in plants and insects”
Symposium on Mosquitoes
(organized by W. Leal):
1) “Reverse chemical ecology: Prospecting for oviposition attractants
for Culex mosquitoes” – Walter S. Leal (University of California,
Davis).
2) “Molecular basis of olfaction in Anopheles gambiae” –
Linda Field (IACR-Rothamsted, Harpenden, Herts, U.K.).
3) “Trapping gravid Aedes mosquitoes with bacteria derived semiochemicals”
– Coby Schal (North Carolina State University, Raleigh).
4) “Behavioral responses of Culex mosquitoes to oviposition attractants”
– Ring Cardé (University of California, Riverside).
5) “Novel behavioral assay for mosquito deterrents” –
Jerome Klun (USDA-ARS, Beltsville, Maryland).
6) “Immobilized odorant binding protein liquid chromatographic stationary
phases: Going with the flow in chemical ecology” – Irving
Wainer (National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Maryland).
Afternoon: Symposium on Mosquitoes (continued)
Silverstein-Simeone Award Lecture: Dr. John Carlson (Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut): “Chemosensory reception and coding in Drosophila”
Contributed papers / Poster session
Monday, 25th:
Morning: Symposium on Semiochemistry (honoring Dr. Kyung Boo; organized
by A. Cossé, T. Baker & J. Aldrich):
1) “Overview of semiochemicals research and application success
in Korea” – Kye Chung Park (Pennsylvania State University,
University Park).
2) “PBAN and PBAN receptors” – Man-Yeon Choi (Iowa State
University, Ames).
3) “Chrysomelid semiochemistry” – Allard Cossé
(USDA-ARS, Peoria, Illinois).
4) “Heliothine moth olfaction” – Tom Baker (Pennsylvania
State University, University Park).
5) “Catnip, aphids and lacewing predators: Tritrophic coincidence
or confusion?” – Jeffrey Aldrich, Kamlesh Chauhan and Qing-He
Zhang (USDA-ARS, Beltsville, Maryland).
6) “Sex pheromones of the navel orangeworm and Pyralis farinalis:
the missing pieces to the puzzle” – Jocelyn Millar, Lodewyk
P. Kuenen, and J. Stephen McElresh (University of California, Riverside).
Afternoon: Contributed papers / Poster session
Tuesday, 26th:
Morning: Symposium on Marine Chemical Ecology (organized
by N. Targett):
1) “Sponge-microbe symbioses: model systems for integrating molecular
and chemical ecology” – Robert Thacker (University of Alabama,
Birmingham).
2) “Seagrass-pathogen interactions: attack by the wasting disease
pathogen, Labyrinthula spp., causes the “pseudo-induction”
of phenolics” – Thomas Arnold (Dickinson College, Carlisle,
Pennsylvania).
3) “The tale of an ordinary bryozoan, its symbiont, and an anticancer
compound: the chemical ecology and biosynthesis of the bryostatins”
– Nicole Lopanik (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor).
4) “Sensory biology and ecology of chemosensory foraging: a tale
of two predators (and their prey)” – Marc Weissburg (Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta).
Noon: Journal of Chemical Ecology luncheon meeting
Afternoon: “Duck” tour of Washington D.C. or tour of Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
Evening: Banquet with Social Lecture (Prof. Jacques M. Pasteels (Universite de Libre Bruxelles, Belgium): “Wonderful meetings and unique opportunities”
Wednesday, 27th:
Morning: Silver Medal Award Lecture: Dr. James H. Tumlinson (Pennsylvania
State University, University Park): “Chemical ecology of plant defenses
against insects and pathogens”
Symposium on Insect-Plant
Interactions (organized by W. Boland & J. Tumlinson):
1) “Plant-insect interactions in Arabidopsis: From transcript profiling
to induced resistance” – Phillip Reymond (University of Lausanne,
Switzerland).
2) “Genetically silenced defense responses: Consequences for the
herbivore community composition on Nicotiana attenuate” –
Rayko Halitschke (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York).
3) “Physiological and molecular adaptations stabilizing symbiotic
ant-plant mutualisms” – Martin Heil (University of Essen-Duisburg,
Germany)
4) Signals, effects, and specificity of volatile-induced plant defense
responses” – Jürgen Engelberth (Pennsylvania State University,
University Park).
5) “Chemical signalling in the microbial community of the lepidopteran
gut” – Jo Handelsman (University of Wisconsin, Madison).
6) “Xenobiotic metabolism by caterpillars: inductions and deductions”
– May Berenbaum (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).
7) “MecWorm, a novel tool to study plant-herbivore interactions”
– Axel Mithöfer (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology,
Jena, Germany)
Afternoon: Insect-Plant Interactions Symposium (continued)
Contributed papers
Final business meeting
John
G. Hildebrand
John
G. Hildebrand is Regents Professor, Director of the Division of Neurobiology
of the Arizona Research Laboratories, and Professor of Neurobiology, Biochemistry
& Molecular Biophysics, Entomology, and Molecular and Cellular Biology
in the University of Arizona.
Dr. Hildebrand was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1942. He earned the A.B. degree (magna cum laude in biology) at Harvard College in 1964 and the Ph.D. degree (in biochemistry) at Rockefeller University in 1969, under the mentorship of Profs. Leonard Spector and Fritz Lipmann. He was a postdoctoral fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and the A.P. Sloan Foundation in the Department of Neurobiology of Harvard Medical School, where he worked with Prof. Edward Kravitz.
Before joining the University of Arizona in 1985 to establish and direct the Division of Neurobiology, Dr. Hildebrand was a Professor of Biological Sciences in Columbia University (1980-85), an Adjunct Professor at Rockefeller University (1981-86), and a member of the faculty of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (1970-80). He has served as a Trustee (1981-89) and member of the Executive Committee (1982-88) of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole and as a Trustee of the Rockefeller University (1970-73) and the Grass Foundation (2001-present). From 1980 until 1997, he also held an appointment as an Associate in Behavioral Biology in the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Dr. Hildebrand’s research combines molecular, anatomical, neurophysiological, and behavioral methods in a multidisciplinary approach to problems of the organization, physiology, functioning, and postembryonic development of the insect nervous system. Areas of principal interest include: physiology, functional organization, and development of the olfactory system; chemical ecology of moth-hostplant interactions; sensory control of feeding, mating, and oviposition behaviors; biochemistry of intercellular communication in the nervous system; and the neurochemical anatomy of central neurosecretory pathways and the neurosecretory control of behavior.
He also has a long record of commitment to education. Over the past 35 years, he has served as research advisor or co-advisor and educational sponsor for 43 postdoctoral associates, 10 Ph.D. students, and 55 undergraduate research students. In 1980-84 he was Co-Director of the summer Neurobiology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. From 1986 until 1997 he was Chairman of the Committee on Neuroscience at the University of Arizona and founding director of its Ph.D. Program in Neuroscience.
Dr. Hildebrand has edited four books, published more than 180 research papers, reviews and book chapters, and lectured widely as an invited colloquium and symposium speaker. Among his honors have been Claude Pepper and MERIT Awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Givaudan Lectureship of the Association of Chemoreception Sciences, an Established Investigatorship of the American Heart Association, the R.H. Wright Award in Olfactory Research, the Max Planck Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, a Wellcome Visiting Professorship at Meharry Medical College, the Jan de Wilde Memorial Lectureship of the University of Wageningen (The Netherlands), the King Solomon Lectureship of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Kenneth Roeder Memorial Lectureship of Tufts University, the Felix Santschi Lectureship of the University of Zürich, the Grandpierre Lectureship of Columbia University, the Pakykula Lectureship of Wellesley College, the IFF Award for Innovative Research in the Chemoreception Sciences, the Founders= Memorial Award of the Entomological Society of America, the Manheimer/Mastertaste Award of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, an Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung Forschungspreis, and election to the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He has been honored with an honorary doctorate from the University of Cagliari in Italy and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Hildebrand has served as President
of the Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs (1988-89),
the International Society for Neuroethology (1995-98), the International
Society for Chemical Ecology (1998-99), and the Association for Chemoreception
Sciences (2002-03) and as Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Section
on Neuroscience of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He is a Founding Fellow, member of the Founding Fellows Planning Group,
and first elected chairman of the Arizona Arts, Sciences and Technology
Academy. He has been a consultant to the Sherman Fairchild Foundation,
National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, National Research
Council, National Academy of Sciences, and the Office of Technology Assessment
of the U.S. Congress, and also to several corporations and universities.
He has served on the Consiglio Scientifico of the Stazione Zoologica of
Naples (Italy), the Fachbeirat of the Max-Planck-Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie
in Seewiesen (Germany), and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Whitney
Marine Laboratory, University of Florida. He has been an editor of 17
scientific journals, including Editor for Developmental Neuroscience of
The Journal of Neuroscience (1983-88) and Co-Editor of the Journal of
Comparative Physiology A (1990-present). He has served as Program Chairman
of both the Society for Neuroscience and the International Society for
Neuroethology, as Treasurer of the Society for Neuroscience, and as an
officer of the International Brain Research Organisation. He is an elected
Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society (UK) and the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, and a member of numerous other scientific
societies, including the International Society of Chemical Ecology. He
is listed in American Men and Women of Science and Who's Who in America,
and his Website can be found at: http://www.neurobio.arizona.edu/faculty/hildebrand/
.
A.C. Oehlschlager
Dr.
Cam Oehlschlager received his Doctorate in Chemistry at Oklahoma State
University in 1965. Between 1966 and 1998 Oehlschlager pursued an academic
career at Simon Fraser University. During his tenure at Simon Fraser Oehlschlager’s
group identified aggregation pheromones for five of the most important
coleopteran pests of stored grain, developed stable isotope methods to
probe the biosynthesis of several complex pheromones and provided commercial
scale syntheses for pheromones of the major coleopteran pests of North
American forests. The availability of gram quantities racemic and chiral
pheromones allowed elucidation of the mechanisms of interspecies selection
as well as development of pheromone-based management strategies for the
North American forestry sector by the Simon Fraser group. While most of
Oehlschlager’s 31 postgraduate students pursued careers in the pharmaceutical
industry a few have made significant contributions to chemical communication:
Dr. Jocelyn Millar (University of California, Riverside), Dr. Desiree
Vanderwel (University of Winnipeg, Canada) and Dr. Jorge Cabezas (University
of Costa Rica).
In the early 1990’s Oehlschlager’s group identified aggregation
pheromones of several species of economically important palm weevils as
well as the coconut rhinoceros beetle. Coincident with his work, one of
these, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus emerged as the most important
pest of date palm in the Arabian Peninsula while the coconut rhinoceros
beetle has ranked as the most important pest of oil palm regeneration
in Southeast Asia for decades.
During the early 1990’s Oehlschlager spearheaded applications of
these and other pheromones for management of pests in tropical America,
the Middle East and Southeast Asia. All of these applications utilize
mass trapping as the control strategy. The spectacular success of the
mass trapping program that emerged from this work led UNFAO and UNDP to
call upon Oehlschlager in the Middle East where he was instrumental in
development of pheromone-based strategies for management Rhynchophorus
ferrugineus.
These developments led Oehlschlager to leave his academic post in 1998
to devote full time to research and development of pheromone-based strategies
for management of insect pests of tropical crops. Oehlschlager’s
vehicle for this endeavor is a private company, ChemTica Internacional,
of which he is, with his wife, an owner. In 2000 ChemTica, located in
Costa Rica, was awarded the Costa Rican Exporter’s Association Award
for development of original products (3,500 members, 1999 winner was Intel
of Costa Rica). As of 2005 the company had 45 employees including nine
University graduates supported by sales in over 40 countries. According
to the 2004 Biopesticide Compendium of the British Crop Protection Council
ChemTica is the major producer for several of the world’s top 50
pheromone products that are used in control strategies. The world-wide
area covered mass trapping (largely developed by Oehlschlager and collaborators)
is nearing 50% of the area covered by mating disruption.
Vice-President
and President-Elect
Gary Blomquist was elected as Vice-President and President-Elect of ISCE.
Gary is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is best known for his work
on the biochemistry and endocrine regulation of pheromone production in
insects.
Dr Jocelyn Millar will become
the new President.
Treasurer
Kenneth Haynes was elected as Treasurer. Ken is a Professor in the Department
of Entomology at the University of Kentucky. His research focuses on the
evolution of species-specificity of chemical communication in moths and
aggressive chemical mimicry by bolas spiders.
The outgoing Treasurer is Dr Steve Teale.
Councilors
ISCE councilors are elected for a term of three years. Councilors are
appointed from various geographical and subject areas, and advise the
ISCE Executive Committee.
The following councilors were elected:
Dr
Eduardo Nuno Barata. Dr Barata is assistant professor at University
of Évora (Portugal). His research spans the identification of aggregation
pheromones in cork oak beetles, sexual behaviour and pheromones in freshwater
and marine fish species, olfaction of calcium in freshwater and marine
fish, and food-related odorants in marine flatfish.
Dr
Anna Borg-Karlson. Dr Borg-Karlson is a Professor at The Royal
Institute of Technology, Dept of Chemistry, Stockholm, Sweden. Her main
research interest is characterization of the diversity and evolution of
chemical signals (chemodiversity) underlying insect perception, behaviour
and insect host-plant preferences.
Dr.
Hiroshi Honda. Dr Honda is a Professor in the Graduate School
of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. His
research focuses on the chemical ecology of insect-insect and plant-insect
interactions.
Dr.
Joachim Ruther. Dr Ruther heads a working group in chemical ecology
at the Institute of Biology, Free University of Berlin, Germany. His major
research interest is sexual communication of insects.
Retiring councilors are: Heidi Dobson,
Jocelyn Millar, Coby Schal, Sadahiro Tatsuki and Walter Leal (as Past-President).
Tom Baker, as Past-President will assume the role of councilor.
TOP
Semiochemicals
in Pest Control and Conservation Biology
Graduate student course on the applications of pheromones, kairomones
and other semiochemicals.
Organized by the Department of Ecology, Lund University and the Department
of Crop Science, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The course
will take place in Lund, Sweden, early 2006,
Scope: Since the first identification of a pheromone over forty years ago the world of chemical signals has received much attention from scientists in biology, chemistry and agriculture/forestry. Many of the findings have come into practical use, mainly for mornitoring or suppression of insect pests. Yet, a very small fraction of crop protection is based on semiochemicals, despite their obvious advantages over conventional insecticides. Why is this and what can be done to increase the applied use of these sustainable alternatives? More recently other possibilities to use odour signals have become obvious in e.g. detection of rare species. Can this be developed and used more widely in conservation biology? These are issues that will be dealt with during the course, which includes lectures, student presentations, exercises and discussions.
On the program
Monitoring of pest species
Monitoring of rare species
Mating disruption
Mass trapping, lure & kill, trap crop
Repellence
Calling for help, tritrophic interactions
Chemistry from milligram scale to kilograms
Commercial and legal aspects
Detailed program is not ready, but you may get an impression
by looking at the schedule of the similar course given in February 2004.
Note that specific titles and teachers might be changed. http://pheromone.ekol.lu.se/infochemicals2.html
Participants: Graduate (MSc, PhD) students in biological, chemical, agricultural or forestry disciplines.
Location: Department
of Ecology, Lund University, Sweden
Time: Early, 2006, 2 weeks full time. Dates will be announced
at the web page when decided. http://pheromone.ekol.lu.se/kurser.html
Language: English, Tuition fee: 3000 SEK (about 325 euro)
including excursion, and course dinner. Payment instructions will be sent
to those that register.
Contact and Registration:
Interested participants are kindly requested to sign up and enclose a
short description of scientific experience and field of research as soon
as possible, and at the latest November 15, 2005 to: Olle Anderbrant,
Department of Ecology (Sect. of Chemical Ecology/Ecotoxicology)
Lund University, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden
Telephone: +46 (0)46 222 4997, fax: +46 (0)46 222 4716, cell phone: +46
(0)70 372 4997
e-mail: olle.anderbrant@ekol.lu.se
The number of participants will
be limited to 30.
Ecosystems
and Sustainable Development V
Edited by: E E. Tiezzi, C.A. Brebbia, S. Jorgensen, and D. Almorza Gomar
Series: WIT Transactions on Ecology & the Environment, Vol 81
(ISSN 1746-448X)
Publisher: WIT PRESS, UK - www.witpress.com
ISBN: 1-84564-013-6, Pages: 776pp
Price: US$435.00, uk pounds sterling 272.00, Euros 408.00