ispi

International Society for Pest Information

Report of the 10th Meeting

Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI) for Plant Protection for Fruit Crops and Viticulture
Dossenheim, Germany, 13 April 2016


1 + 2. Welcome and designation of chairman and rapporteur for the meeting

Jürgen Gross opened the meeting. A list of the members attending the meeting is attached as Annex I. Stefan Vidal was nominated as chairman for the meeting and Bernhard Zelazny as rapporteur.

3. Adoption of the agenda

The provisional agenda, which corresponded to the numbered sections of this report was adopted.

4. Election of officers

A total of 12 ballots were completed by the attending members or had been submitted by other members by email. One ballot sent by email was unreadable, apparently due to a software problem. The ballots were counted by two employees of the institute, Jannicke Gallinger und Margit Rid, who are not members of the society. The election for the President and Vice-President produced the following results:

Jürgen Gross (4 votes)
Olaf Zimmermann (3 votes)
Stefan Vidal (3 votes)
Jürgen Gross accepted his election a new president. A coin was flipped for determining the Vice-President and the draw fell on Olaf Zimmermann who accepted the post. The meeting members expressed their gratitude to Stefan Vidal for serving as President of the Society during the last 3 years. The other Society Officers were elected as follows:

Executive Officer:
Bernhard Zelazny (10 votes)

Finance Committee:
Marcin Nowicki (9 votes)
Stefan Vidal agreed to serve as 2nd finance officer.

5. Report of ISPI activities since the last meeting, March 2015

Bernhard Zelazny reported on the activities of the Society between March 2015 and March 2016. The main activities were changing the format of the pest, diseases, weed and beneficial pages on the “Pest Information Wiki” as discussed during the last (9th) meeting of the society. Around 2/3rd of these pages are now in the new format.

Other activities included a promotional poster on the Pest Information Wiki prepared by Olaf Zimmermann and presented during the International Plant Protection Congress in Berlin, in August 2015. The MediaWiki software was upgraded by Andreas Plank and Gregor Hagedorn in March 2016. The report of the activities of the society was accepted by the participants and the complete version is attached as Annex II.

6. Financial status and accounts for the year 2015

Jürgen Gross reported on the financial status of the Society and presented the ISPI accounts for the year 2015. The total expenditures during 2015 were Euro 173 and the account balance at the end of 2015 was Euro 4019. The financial report for 2015 was accepted by the participants and is reproduced in Annex III.

7. Overview of some aspects of the Bugwood Network

Joseph LaForest presented an overview of the “Bugwood Network”. The network is based at the University of Georgia in Tifton, Georgia, U.S.A. and is active in collecting information and images on pests, diseases and weeds. The main focus is on species invasive in the U.S.A. The collected information is published as a series of interlinked databases, maps and images. Special software is developed for aspects like automatically entering the location of a pest into a database through the position of a mobile phone.

Important aspects of the system are for example to help in the identification of species through a collection of > 140,000 images, or recording the distribution and spread of invasive species. The network is supported by a variety of projects and collaborates with various national and international organizations and groups.

8. Discussion on possible collaboration between the Bugwood Network and ISPI

The presentation of Joseph LaForest lead to a discussion on possible areas of collaboration between the Bugwood Network and ISPI. It was apparent that the general aim of both organizations is similar, being directed at gathering information on pests, diseases and weeds. There is further an overlap in some areas, for example the pages of the Bugwoodwiki and the pages of the Pest Information Wiki on pests/diseases/weeds have a common outline, consisting of a summary of the species, images and literature references. The pages in the Bugwoodwiki have usually more text information and the Pestinfo Wiki more relevant publications.

It was noted that the Bugwood Network has a more practical approach, directed at serving pest management professionals who are, for example, involved in recording and trying to contain invasive species. The Pest Information Wiki is mainly research oriented, serving scientists, especially students and scientists in developing countries who do not have access to commercial literature databases.

It was concluded that a collaboration would be desirable and two initial activities were identified: 1) For ISPI to retrieve from its literature database a list of pests, diseases and weeds which are not found in the U.S.A., but are important pests outside the U.S. 2) To try to establish links in the pages of the Bugwoodwiki to the literature database of the Pestinfo Wiki.

9 + 10. Other matters

A discussion on the Pest Information Wiki covered aspects like:

Stefan Vidal (Chairman)
Bernhard Zelazny (Rapporteur)


Annex I

10th ISPI meeting - participants

Members participating in the meeting:

Jürgen Gross
JKI Dossenheim, Germany

Joseph LaForest
The University of Georgia, Tifton, GA, U.S.A. (by video conference)

Stefan Vidal
University Göttingen, Germany

Bernhard Zelazny
Griesheim, Germany (retired)

Olaf Zimmermann
Landwirtschaftliches Technologiezentrum Augustenberg, Karlsruhe, Germany

Members participating in the election by e-mail, but who were not attending the meeting:

Carmelo Peter Bonsignore
Martin Damus
Michel Lecoq
Alois M. Huger
Regina Kleespies
Thorsten Kraska
Marcin Nowicki
Charles Vincent


Annex II

10th ISPI meeting
Summary Report on the Society Activities
between March 2015 and April 2016

During the 9th meeting of ISPI in Frankfurt/M (March 2015), a number of basic changes in the wiki pages covering pests and beneficials were discussed and agreed on. The main activities since the 9th meeting was to implement these changes. Around 2/3rd of all pages on pests and beneficials are now in the new format.

In the old format, the pages on genera, families and higher taxonomic groups had been formatted as wiki category pages. For most users the category pages are confusing and they contain separate lists for subcategories and normal pages. In the new format the category pages still exist (and are needed for many functions like producing lists of pests or beneficials). However, they are hidden from the user. The new format makes it easier to find information on groups like families and genera or the combined literature records of all members of a genus. In addition, navigating between genera and families is now less confusing and is achieved by a horizontal list of links on top of each page.

Other activities:


Annex III

10th ISPI meeting
Financial Summary for 2015

Financial Committee Members:

Jürgen Gross
JKI Dossenheim, Germany

Jürg Huber
Aadorf, Switzerland

Accounts for 2015 (currency Euro)

Item

Income

Expenses

Opening balance, 1st January 2015

4,191.46

 

Credit by 1 & 1

1.68

 

Server and email charges

 

154.76

Bank charges

 

18.70

Total

4,193.14

173.46

Balance as of 31st Dec. 2015

4,019.68