Minutes From the Business Meeting of the Fungus Division. August
2, 2004.
XXXVII Annual Meeting of the SIP, Helsinki, Finland
Chair: Judith Pell (present)
Chair Elect: Jørgen Eilenberg
(present)
Secretary/Treasurer: Helen Roy (present)
Member at large: Stefan Jaronski (absent)
Member at large: Pedro Neves
(absent)
1. Welcome
The
chair, Judy Pell, welcomed everyone to the Fungus Division business
meeting.
2. Approval
of minutes from last meeting
Motion: Micky
Guire moved to approve the minutes.
Seconded: Michael Brownbridge
Vote: Majority in favour
3. Chairs
report (Judy Pell)
Symposia, workshops and funding for
speakers
Judy reported
that the Fungus Division was supporting one workshop (Risk Assessment) and one
symposium (Fungal Associations: ecology and evolution) at this meeting and was
also contributing to two cross divisional events (History of SIP and a workshop
on education).
Two Student
travel awards ($500 each) have been issued to: Jason Baverstock
and Ernst Jan Scholte. Next year only $500 will be available.
The Council
have given the Fungus division $1000 to support non-members in attending the
SIP annual meeting. Money allocated for
symposium speakers will not be carried forward next year.
The Biocontrol Network in Canada gave $1000 to support attendance by a
speaker from industry. Judy thanked Mark Goettel for organising this.
Publication of symposia and workshops
The Council
would like to raise the impact of the meeting by publishing papers from one
Symposium from each division in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology (a
special November edition).
John
Vandenberg stressed that as a division we should be proactive about this and
manuscripts should be submitted at the time of the meeting. Richard Humber also reported that Mycopathologia had expressed an interest in publishing SIP
symposia. This was welcomed but John
Vandenberg suggested that we show support to JIP as the Journal linked with the
Society. Richard Humber agreed but asked
that Mycopathologia be considered if JIP was unable
to publish some papers.
Jørgen
Eilenberg reported on the system
previously used by Biocontrol, Science and Technology
who recently produced a special journal edition on behalf of a British
Mycological Society meeting; the journal set a deadline for submission and then
reviewed individual invited contributions.
Judy Pell
highlighted that we would need to know details of symposia much earlier in
order to allow sufficient time to produce papers.
Motion:
Mark Goettel
moved to consider JIP when coordinating symposia.
Seconded: Richard Meadow
Vote: Majority in favour
Hermann Strasser suggested that we indicate a desire to publish
this years symposium on risk assessment.
Helen Roy
suggested that the education workshop would also be a good synthesis or review.
Action: Jørgen
Eilenberg will highlight the desirability
of publishing symposia to all future symposia chairs and Judy Pell will give
feedback to council that the Fungus Division would be interested in producing
reviews on this years Risk Assessment symposium and Education Workshop.
4. Treasurers
report (Helen Roy)
Helen presented the following tables:
Membership
has fallen to 113 (126 last year) but this reflects an overall trend in the
Society.
5. Election
of a new committee members
Chair elect
Jørgen Eilenberg
will become the new chair as Judy Pell’s term ends. There were two nominees for a new chair elect: John
Vandenberg and Fernando Vega. Fernado Vega was elected as the new chair elect.
Secretary/ treasurer
Helen Roy has
completed her term as secretary/ treasurer.
There were two nominees for the position: Rosalind James and Melanie Filotas. Rosalind James was elected.
Member at large
The members at
large are responsible for raising the profile of the society. Pedro Neves is leaving the position of Member at
Large. There were two nominees: Louella Castrillo and Sunday Ekesi. Sunday Ekesi was elected.
Paresh Shah
indicated that the role of Member at Large could be more proactive and better
utilised.
6. Student affairs committee
Last year
SIP council agreed to convene a student affairs committee with one student
representative from each division. The
purpose of this committee is to provide a mechanism for feedback from students
which would help the society to determine how students can be better
served. Todd Ugine represents the
Microbial Control Division and Ernst Jan-Scholte
represents the Fungus Division. This
year the student affairs committee convened an excellent workshop. Todd explained that becoming a student
representative was an excellent way of getting involved with the society and
new representatives are required because it had already been agreed that there
would be a two year limit to each post and so all of them will complete their
term soon. The current committee have
agreed to stay on to provide some continuity with new representatives (and
because it’s fun!).
Action: Names of possible representatives should be forwarded to Jørgen Eilenberg.
7. Symposia for
next years meeting
Judy Pell
invited proposals for symposia for next years meeting.
i.) Micky McGuire: Workshop on Beauveria and tools for studying this genus
ii.) Helen
Roy: COST action 842 (EU initiative focussing
on Entomophthorales in which scientists from within
the EU come together to discuss specific themes relating to Entomophthorales)
will be coming to an end in 2005 and a symposium could be organised on the
activities of this action. Siegfried
Keller is the chair of this action and he should be contacted to convene the
symposium.
iii.) Rosalind James: Disease
transmission.
iv.) Ellie Groden: Fungi in
forests
v.) Steve Wraight: Grasshopper
control
vi.)
Charlotte Nielsen: Cordyceps (but this may be more
suited to the 2006 meeting in China)
vii.) John
Vandenberg: Diseases of marine
invertebrates (crossdivisional)
Judy Pell:
all the ideas are great – further proposals should be submitted to Jørgen Eilenberg as soon as possible so they can then be circulated to the committee
including the past chair for a decision on which ones go forward this year.
Action: All proposals to be submitted to Jørgen Eilenberg by October 1st.
John
Vandenberg commented that it will not be guaranteed that we get both a workshop
and a symposium in the programme. There
is concern that there will not be sufficient room for contributed papers;
however we need to argue that as the second largest division we should be
allocated the space in the programme. Jørgen Eilenberg added to this that there is a
dominance of fungal based papers.
Mark Goettel felt that chairs of symposia
should be a larger part of the organising committee.
John Vandenberg advocated the model of the Entomological
Society of America whereby there is a discussion of ideas and then a deadline
set for firm proposals which must include an introductory paragraph and list of
speakers.
Action:
Submission of symposium ideas to the Chair.
8. Sequencing
Fungal Genomes
Ray St
Leger had produced a proposal to get the genome of Metarhizium anisopliae sequenced within the 2002
Fungal Genome Initiative. There have
been discussions on this but the NSF have suspended
funding for 1 year and so the proposal will be resubmitted next year.
Committee:
Ray St Leger (Chair)
Steve Reyner
Alice Churchill
John Vandenberg
Don Roberts
Stefan Jaronski
Richard Humber
Judy Pell (Division representative)
9. Website
Discussion: There has been
little progress since last years meeting.
Judy Pell and Helen Roy circulated a short questionnaire by e-mail and
responses have been collated. Stefan Jaronski is now working on this further.
Paresh Shah
was invited to become the Division’s webmaster.
Action: Paresh to liaise with Stefan and Helen to move the website ahead and
all division members should provide ideas.
Committee:
Helen Roy
(no web expertise but willing to collate information)
Paresh Shah
(WEBMASTER)
Stefan Jaronski (has web expertise)
10. Dues and fundraising
Last year
we had lengthy discussions on whether or not to raise dues. These discussions were continued this
year. The intended use of dues is for
travel awards and to provide a capital base.
It was suggested that the dues could be used to support web design. John Vandenberg suggested that instead of
raising dues it would be possible to add a line to our divisional entry on the
SIP membership payment form to opt to donate extra money.
Motion: Michael Brownbridge moved to include an
optional donation box in addition to the membership dues.
Seconded: Rosalind James
Vote: Majority
in favour
CD-ROM
Mark Goettel indicated
that there had been no action in this area.
Paresh Shah questioned the value of a CD-ROM given that many people can
access images from the web or free from the source. Steve Reyner
suggested that if we had an image rich website we could ensure images were only
available to members by including a block on the website. This may increase membership.
Motion: Richard
Meadow moved to eliminate issue of CD as fund raiser but we consider how we
will present good images of entomopathogenic fungi.
Seconded: Rosalind James
Vote: Majority in favour
Action: Charlotte Nielsen
agreed to coordinate image collation. Rosalind James will ensure
that an advert goes into the newsletter asking for images to be sent to Charlotte after
liaising with Charlotte on suitable topic areas.
11.
Adjournment of meeting
John Vandenberg
commended current officers for a job well done and Judy Pell welcomed the new
officers.
Minutes
respectfully submitted by Helen Roy (10th September 2003)
