First ISBCA Home Page
Welcome to the ISBCA 2001
FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF ARTHROPODS
SEPTEMBER 17-21, 2001
HONOLULU, HAWAII
A Word from the Organizers about the Symposium
A need has been identified to provide better communication among scientists conducting programs of applied biological control against pest insects and mites. No suitable meeting currently exists that regularly brings these applied scientists in this field together in an atmosphere conducive to focused exchange of information. To alleviate this deficiency, the organizing commitee, headed by Dr. Roy Van Driesche, propose to organize and hold the first International Symposium on Arthropod Biological Control in September 2001. The Symposium will be repeated on a 4-yr cycle, following the highly successful model used for 40 years by workers on biological control of weeds.
The reason such a meeting is needed is that the biological control of arthropods, while in increasing demand, faces a series of challenges that, unless addressed, will lead to a substantial reduction in such work (indeed some argue that this is already underway).
Format of meeting: The format of the symposium is patterned after the meeting style that has been used for the last 40 years by the weed biocontrol group, which has been highly successful in fostering group cohesion and information exchange. Key elements of this format are:
1. Keeping the group's size small (in the 100-250 range), with attendees being largely if not exclusively people actually conducting programs of arthropod biological control. To achieve this, we intend to limit the group's focus to the use of parasitoids and predators, to the exclusion of pathogens, since the pathogens group already has a forum for exchange of information (the Society of Invertebrate Pathology meetings). Also, we intend to make interest in the actual conduct of biological control programs a key element, since basic scientists interested only in natural enemy biology as a pure science already have a forum of their own (the Entomophagous Insects Workshop).
2. A single session meeting. To foster interchange of information among attendees, the weed biocontrol meetings have avoided the use of concurrent sessions. We intend to follow this model. All participants will attend all talks together for the duration of the meeting (probably 4 days), giving everyone the maximum exposure to all the ideas discussed and the greatest opportunity to interact with all the people at the meeting.
3. A published proceedings at the start of the meeting. All speakers will submit a 3-5 page article on their presentation, which will be edited and published before the meeting. Attendees will have these papers in their hands during the meeting as a source book. This has been shown to work well for the weed biocontrol meetings and we intend to do likewise. The US Forest Service, Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team at Morgantown, West Virginia has made a commitment to cover the costs of printing this volume. This volume will also provide a permanent and citable reference to the topics discussed at the meeting.
4. A regular series of meetings. The intent is to repeat this meeting every four years, rotating internationally as volunteers come forward to serve as hosts in each new 4-yr cycle.
5. An international meeting. This meeting is intended to drawn people working on insect and mite biological control from all over the world. Currently, we have good contacts in Australia and the United States. We will actively solicit participation from key scientists in Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa.
6. Regional Coordinators: One of the goals of the meeting is to make it truly international, with good participation from all parts of the world. To promote this outcome, we will be identifying "Regional Coordinators" whose job will be promote awareness of the meeting among biological control workers in specific geographic areas. Following is a list of "regions" and the coordinators for those regions. Where we are lacking coordinators, please feel free to volunteer!
1. Europe and Russia: Dr. Ullie Kuhlmann
2. South and Central America: Dr. Elizabeth De Nardo
3. North America (US, Canada and Mexico): Dr. Mark Hoddle, UC Riverside,CA, USA
4. Japan: open
5. China: Dr. Da-Wei Huang
6. Southeast Asia: Dr. Banpot Napompeth
7. Australia, New Zealand and Oceania: Dr. Don Sands, CSIRO, Brisbane, Australia
8. South Asia (India, Pakistan and surrounding areas): open
9. The Middle East: Moshe Coll, Rehovot, Israel
10. Africa: Peter Neuenschwander (IITA)
Organizing Committee
The Organizing Committee, as currently composed (September 1, 2000)
1. Roy Van Driesche, University of Massachusetts
2. Kevin Hackett, ARS
3. Dick Reardon, U.S. Forest Service
4. Don Sands, CSIRO, Australia
5. Jim Cullen, CSIRO, Australia
6. Mark Hoddle, University of California
7. Kevin Heinz, Texas A and M University
8. Tom Bellows, University of California
Jump to Top of Home Page