NEWSLETTER

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

• Secretary/Editor's Message
• Report from the Annual Business Meeting
• President’s Message
• Annual Meeting Report
• Call for Nominations for the Year 2007 ISCE Silver Medal and Silverstein-Simeone Awards
• Call for Nominations for ISCE Vice-President, Councilors for 2006
• New Books

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 February 15, 2006.

Another superb Annual Meeting has been and gone. Jeff Aldrich and co. organized a top quality meeting in Washington D.C., incorporating all the ingredients that make ISCE meetings so productive and enjoyable. Next year’s meeting, again in one of the world’s great cities, Barcelona, promises to be equally as interesting scientifically and culturally.

One recurring question at ISCE Executive and business meetings is: “What can the society do to improve the services it offers its members”? The society is run by volunteer members and has limited resources and income (low membership dues). Therefore, it can offer only limited services to its members. Currently, the society offers a number of tangible benefits to its members including, the annual meeting (the main meeting point for members), honors to outstanding scientists, financial awards to students that attend the annual meeting, this newsletter, a website for communication (e.g., for job advertisements), and an association with the Journal of Chemical Ecology (published by a commercial publisher). In addition, the society offers the intangible benefit of providing a forum and common voice for spreading information about activities in chemical ecology throughout the world.

In a broad sense, the society’s members over the years fall into three categories: a consistent core that regularly participates in the society’s activities, a less consistent group that periodically participates in the society’s activities, and an ephemeral group of people who attend one or two meetings and then disappear from the society. If the society offered more tangible benefits to its members, then perhaps the latter two groups would participate more consistently or permanently in the society’s activities. We need some new ideas on how to optimize society membership for the benefit of ALL people throughout the world working or interested in chemical ecology. To subvert the famous John F Kennedy speech: Ask not what you can do for your society -ask what your society can do for you! Anyone with practical suggestions for improving the society’s services, please email them to me and I will present them to the council members.

Finally, many thanks to those of you who forwarded me photographs of the Washington meeting, especially Wilhelm Boland and Till Tolasch. Unfortunately, there is not enough space to publish all of the photos in this newsletter and I have been able to use only a small proportion. On the lighter side, below is a photograph from the meeting lacking a caption (indicated by “Please supply a caption”). Please email me suggestions. The best, or at least the most suitable, as judged by me, will be posted under the picture by the end of October!

Stephen Foster
Secretary, ISCE

Please supply a caption

The results of the elections were announced, with Gary Blomquist being elected new Vice President, Ken Haynes, new Treasurer, and Eduardo Barata, Anna Borg-Karlson, Hiroshi Honda and Joachim Ruther as new councilors.

The Treasurer’s report was presented by Ken Haynes, since the retiring Treasurer, Steve Teale, could not make the business meeting. The Society was in a sound financial state and was approaching sufficient principal assets such that it could anticipate using some of its yearly earnings to support some function of the society. A healthy profit of $9,487.70 was achieved in 2004. However, this was due largely to the profit of $5600 from the 2002 Hamburg meeting. Gifts from Trécé and Kluwer for student travel awards and the Silverstein-Simeone Award, respectively, were also received. Overall, this left the society with total assets at the end of fiscal year 2004 of $154,498. Investments in fiscal year 2005 (to May 31) had continued to grow, and were now at $170,594. The Society had also received a gift from Fuji Flavor Co. toward the Silver Medal award expenses of the 2005 meeting. It was reported that the council had decided to set a minimum figure for student travel each year for subsequent meetings. The amount would be suggested by the Treasurer and decided by a vote of the council. The amount would then be communicated to next year’s organizer roughly one year in advance of the meeting. A minimum sum of $7500 would be allocated to student travel awards for the 2006 meeting. Additionally, council had decided that a sub-committee would be formed to set strict criteria for the allocation of student awards to be used by future Student Awards Committees.

The Treasurer’s report was concluded by summarizing membership. Currently, there are 320 paid members of ISCE. This consists of 102 life members and 88 student members. The greatest proportion of the membership is still in the USA.

Secretary Foster reported that it had been an uneventful year. Three newsletters had been published on the website. The elections had a very good participation rate, which was encouraging for the involvement of society members. One problem with the elections was the apathy toward nominating. Councilors, and indeed members, should take this responsibility more seriously. Finally, he added that members contacted him frequently over membership issues. One particular concern was the inaccuracy of membership details on the website. The society would investigate ways to make this more accurate and up to date so that members could check easily whether they were paid up or not.

Webmaster Cossé reported on the year’s activities. He had changed the web host from AIT to FatCow. FatCow was not only cheaper but offered more space (1 Gbyte). It also offered possibilities for membership renewal online. Overall, in the past year there had been 45,000 people visits to the website. The most downloaded web pages were the Ottawa meeting abstracts, the newsletters and the positions available. The website was on the front page of every major search engine on the web.

John Romeo reported on the Journal of Chemical Ecology. Since the journal went to online submission, there has been an average of 53 days from submission to making a decision. Average time to publication was 6.2 months. In 2004, the editors dealt with 270 papers and had a rejection rate of ca. 45%. Submissions were slightly up. Plant-Insect relationships was the biggest category (ca. 45%) of papers published, with pheromones next (27%). In 2004, 10% of papers had a molecular biology component. The rapid communication section had an average of 50 days to publication, but there was an acceptance rate of only 20%. Overall, the impact factor was down slightly (1.67-1.60), but the half-life of citations was up. The journal had moved from 3 to 5 editors in the past year, with McNeil, Hillker and Seybold added. Bill Foley and Heidi Appel had been added as Editorial Board members.

President Mustaparta announced that there would be two Silver Medals awarded in 2006. There had been an exact split in votes for John Hildebrand and Cam Oelschlager. However, there would be no Silverstein-Simeone award for 2006.

Future meetings were discussed. The 2006 meeting would be held in downtown Barcelona July 15-19 and would consist of 5 symposia organized by Leal, Roelofs, Baker, Hartmann and Burger. The meeting would be held in the Biology School at the University. There would be a range of accommodation available from luxury hotel to student residences. For social events, there would be a musical concert in a church and a city tour. Other scheduled meeting sites were:
- 2007: Jena, Germany (Wilhelm Boland)
- 2008: Pennsylvania State University, USA (Gary Felton and Jim Tumlinson)
- 2009: Neuchatel, Switzerland (Ted Turlings and Martine Rahier)
- 2010: Tours, France (Anne-Geneviève Bagnéres)
- 2011: Open for North America
- 2012-2014 Vilnius, Lithuania, Stockholm, Sweden, Christchurch, New Zealand (precise order yet to be determined).

Secretary Foster pointed out that there were some issues regarding councilors and Executive officers. First, Jean-Luc Clément had resigned his role as a councilor (and member). Second, several councilors (Millar, Haynes, Blomquist) had assumed Executive positions. This left a shortfall of 3 councilors. Rather than hold an election several outgoing councilors would be approached to stay on for the years in question. Foster also pointed out that the Secretary position was due for election this year, but this had been overlooked, probably because the Treasurer was outgoing and because of the cancellation of the 2003 meeting. Foster had been asked by council to stay on in the position, and he agreed to do so for at least another year.

Finally, the Presidency was handed to Jocelyn Millar for 2005/06, who declared the meeting closed.

Stephen Foster,
Secretary, ISCE

Returning home from the excellent and enjoyable meeting of the ISCE in Washington at the end of July, I had an opportunity to reflect on our Society and how it has evolved since its incorporation in the 1980’s. It was founded by a small group of scientists who were deeply interested in the interplay between chemistry and biology, and whose expertise spanned a variety of disciplines. They understood that chemical signals and cues served as a universal medium of communication between organisms of all types, from microscopic single-celled organisms through to the world’s largest living beings. This theme has continued through the many ISCE meetings that I have attended in the intervening years, including the Washington meeting, where we were treated to presentations on microbial chemical ecology at one end of the scale, and chemical ecology of elephants at the other. In fact, one of the reasons that I find ISCE meetings so interesting and engaging is because they showcase research across such a broad range of taxa. At each meeting, we are presented with novel ideas, strategies, and methods, as well as being given glimpses of the inner workings of fascinating biological systems. It is also reassuring to see that Society members have rapidly assimilated the great leaps forward that have occurred in the sciences in the past couple of decades, with a substantial fraction, if not the majority of papers, incorporating aspects of molecular biology, neuroscience, and other rapidly advancing disciplines. Indeed, the Society is very dynamic, continuing to grow and evolve through the science of its members.

There are many other signs that the Society is healthy. For example, we currently have volunteers to host annual meetings until 2014, in a succession of wonderful venues. The ISCE is also in sound financial health, in considerable part due to retiring Treasurer Stephen Teale’s astute stewardship of the Society’s funds. The student travel awards continue to be highly successful and highly competitive, with far more applicants than we have funds available. The quality of the student presentations has also been high, and it has been a pleasure to talk with our bright and enthusiastic student members about their work.

However, in other ways the ISCE is at a turning point, because many of the founding members of the Society have retired or soon will reach retirement. The vision and drive of this group of senior scientists have played a major role in the Society. Their commitment to the ISCE as Life Members, their willingness to serve as ISCE officers and meeting hosts, and their efforts to promote public and governmental awareness of chemical ecology have underpinned our science and our Society. It is essential to the continued good health of the Society that a new generation of scientists step forward to take the places of our senior members as they retire, and that behind this generation, we are actively encouraging and recruiting bright young students and postdocs so that they in turn will become the foundation of the Society. For those of you who are current members, I welcome your involvement and participation in ISCE affairs at all levels, whether it be volunteering to serve as an ISCE officer or meeting host, organizing sessions or symposia for the annual meetings, helping with fundraising to support symposia or student travel, or participating in our annual meetings. I also strongly encourage you to recruit top-notch colleagues and students to the Society, so that we continue to grow and evolve, both in terms of numbers and in terms of new directions. We have a lot to offer to new members in terms of exposure to a broad cross-section of excellent multidisciplinary science, and we in turn will benefit from infusion of fresh faces, new ideas, and novel biological systems. We all know colleagues who are heavily involved in chemical ecology but who are not currently members. Please make an effort to bring them into the Society, both for their benefit and for ours.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jeff Aldrich for hosting the 21st meeting of the Society in Washington, which was a great success. It was a pleasure to work with Hanna Mustaparta over the past year during her term as the ISCE President, and I am grateful to Tom Baker as Past President for his help in working with Fuji Flavor and Kluwer, who have provided continuing support for the ISCE’s major awards, along with the Student Travel support provided by Trécé. I am also deeply grateful to the people who do much of the behind-the-scenes work that keeps the Society going, including our Secretary Stephen Foster and Webmaster Allard Cossé, who was largely responsible for the ISCE transition to electronic correspondence. Special thanks to Stephen Teale for his years of service as the ISCE Treasurer; his careful management of the Society’s funds has left us in an enviable financial position. I also welcome Ken Haynes, our new treasurer, who is working with Stephen Teale to ensure a smooth transition.

I look forward to seeing many of you next year in Barcelona at the meeting to be hosted by Angel Guerrero. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to step up and do your part to help the Society grow and move forward. We are all volunteers in a good cause.

Jocelyn Millar
President, ISCE

The ISCE Silver Medal Award is intended to recognize career achievement by an outstanding scientist working in the field of chemical ecology. The Silverstein-Simeone Award, established in 1995, to honor Milt Silverstein and John Simeone, is made on the basis of recent or current work, by the individual, of an outstanding nature at the “cutting edge” of chemical ecology. The recipient must deliver a plenary lecture at the annual ISCE meeting and publish a paper on the same topic in the Journal of Chemical Ecology. The expenses of the recipient of the Silverstein-Simeone Award to attend the annual meeting are paid by the society through the generous sponsorship of Springer Publishers. Nominators should be ISCE members in good standing. Nominations will be reviewed by the President and Vice President for relevance to the appropriate award, before forwarding them to the full ISCE Executive Committee. Should a nomination for one award be considered more relevant for the other award, the President will contact the nominator(s) regarding reconsideration. Current ISCE officers or councilors are not eligible for the awards because of possible conflict of interest. Note that previous, unsuccessful nominations must be renominated to be considered for the awards. It would be helpful to resubmit the nomination packets for these individuals.

The nomination process is the same for both awards and is as follows:
• A nomination letter explaining why the nominee should be recognized for the award, stressing either their current cutting-edge research (for the Silverstein-Simeone award) or their career achievements (for the Silver Medal award).
• Curriculum vitae, including a list of publications pertinent to the research on which the award is based (for the Silverstein-Simeone award), or a full list of publications (for the Silver Medal award). If desired, supporting letters from other colleagues.

Please submit all parts of the packet in electronic format (including supporting letters) along with one paper copy to: Dr Jocelyn Millar, President ISCE, Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside CA 92521, USA email: millar@ucr.edu
Deadline for receipt of nominations: 31 December 2005.

Nominations for the positions of Vice-President and four new councilors are called. The position of Vice-President is prestigious in that he/she will assume the position of Society President in the year following tenure of the role of Vice-President.
ISCE councilors are elected for a term of three years. Councilors must commit to attending at least two ISCE Executive meetings during this period. Their other principal responsibilities are participation in the selection of the Silver Medal and Silverstein-Simeone Award and to provide general guidance and assistance to the Executive Committee. It is expected that all people nominated for the above positions have a strong record of participation in Society activities and meetings. It is highly desirable that the elections have competition for the positions, i.e., that there is more than one high quality candidate for Vice-President and at least 5 candidates for the councilor positions.

Please send names, contact addresses, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses of candidates along with a short description of why you think the candidate(s) would be suitable for office, to
Dr Hanna Mustaparta, Past-President, Department of Biology, Neuroscience Unit, Norwegian University of Science and Technology MTFS, Olav Kyrresgt. 3, NO-7489 Trondheim. Email: hanna.mustaparta@bio.ntnu.no
Deadline for receipt of nominations is December 31 2005.

Chemical Ecology and Phytochemistry of Forest Ecosystems. Vol 39, Recent Advances in Phytochemistry. ISBN: 0-08-044712-0. Year 2005. USD $210/EUR190. (Discounted 50% to members of Phytochemical Society of North America.) Edited by J.T. Romeo.
This volume explores tropical and boreal forests. It is an interdisciplinary forum with chapters focusing on phytochemistry, insect biochemistry, molecular biology, genomics/proteomics, plant/insect/pathogen interactions, and ecological modeling. It challenges our thinking about these systems and leads to a higher level of understanding of our endangered ecosystems. A timely range of topics are explored that include: induced insect defenses in Conifers and Populus; conifer interactions with bark beetles; population patterns and physiological processes; sources of natural insecticides; functions of terpenoids and polyphenols; molecular biochemistry and genomics of terpenoids; insect olfaction and learning; chemosensory-specific proteins.

Stephen Foster, Editor
Department of Entomology
North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND 58105, USA
Stephen.foster@ndsu.nodak.edu

Visit the ISCE Webpage at http://chemecol.org/

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