ISH now on paypal for membership renewal

ISH membership renewal (family, student and individual) can now be done using paypal. You can use paypal to pay for your renewal using a credit card and do not need to have a paypal account. There is a flat rate of two dollars that applies for the paypal fees. We will be sending renewal reminders periodically and hope this service makes the process easier for the ISH community.

Renewals will take a few days to process and you will receive notification by email concerning your addition to the ISH membership directory.

Of course you are free to mail you payment in along with the renewal form found on the same web page.

power point online about the 7th international hymenopterists conference in Köszeg

The 7th international hymenopterists conference in Köszeg, Hungary is scheduled for June 20-26 2010. George Melika created this great power point presentation as an introduction to the meeting location, facilities, and program to get us all acquainted.

ISH symposium at ESA

The ESA program this year doesn't have the ISH symposium listed in any obvious way, but we still have a business meeting! Here are the details:

Sunday, December 13, 2009: 1:30 PM-4:55 PM
Room 203, Second Floor (Convention Center)

• 1:30 PM Introductory Remarks
• 1:35 PM 0103 Tips and strategies for bulk collecting and processing. Michael W. Gates, USDA-ARS
• 1:55 PM 0104 Modern techniques in myrmecology. Ted Schultz, Smithsonian Institution
• 2:15 PM 0105 Managing massive multi-collaborator surveys. Michael J. Sharkey, University of Kentucky
• 2:35 PM Break
• 2:50 PM 0106 Implementing multi-user databases for phylogenetic analysis. John Heraty, University of California-Riverside; Jason Mottern, University of California-Riverside; Matthew J. Yoder, North Carolina State University; Roger A. Burks, University of California-Riverside
• 3:10 PM 0107 Predicting the future of scientific imaging of Hymenoptera. Matthew Buffington, Systematic Entomology Laboratory USDA-ARS
• 3:30 PM 0108 50 years of digging for black gold! Lubomir Masner, Agriculture Canada
• 3:50 PM Concluding Remarks (and business meeting!)
  

Country names in member database

As part of our attempt to standardize the ISH members database we added a pick-list for the country names in the members edit form. This list comes from the ISO 3166 standard for country names. If you have concerns regarding the names please let us know.

A new home for ISH

In the next few weeks the International Society of Hymenopterists website will change hosting companies. We are moving to Dreamhost because they provide free hosting for organizations with non-profit status and allow us to maintain our own member database.

Please forgive any website downtime as we make the transition.

New membership database

In the February 2009 newsletter I mentioned that we were developing a new ISH membership database that would allow each of us to :

• make address changes
• pay our dues online and sponsor other members
• browse/search for colleagues
• save the Society hosting fees
• enable us to easily feed address information to the publisher of JHR

We are happy to report that this new database will finally be online in early July thanks to the programming efforts of ISH member Katja Seltmann. I post some screen shots below to tantalize you. More info to follow soon...

Members can login. If they lose their passwords they can solicit password reminders.

Members can edit their address and other information in their profiles.

Members can browse or search for other members.

JHR back issues

I've been taking advantage of the Biodiversity Heritage Library's archive of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research lately, and I think it's worth reminding everyone that every issue from volumes 1-16 (1992-2007) is up there. You can download each issue as a PDF, and you can search/select text. There are some real gems in there! The image above, which is an illustration of Aleiodes melanopterus (Erichson), can be found on page 266 in volume 1, issue 1.

February 2009 newsletter available

We're a couple weeks late with the February 2009 newsletter (PDF), but it's finally available. Among the highlights you'll find a preliminary announcement for the 7th International Congress of Hymenopterists, to be held June 20-26, 2010 in the beautiful town of Kőszeg, Hungary (a more official announcement (.doc) is also available). Perhaps most importantly, however, is the call for 2009 membership renewals (see page 5 of the newsletter for that all-too-familiar dues form). Please send in your membership renewal within the next four weeks in order to escape paying the $10 late fee!

new ISH group on Facebook

We have a new group on Facebook. We welcome anyone to join us!