Proctos newsletter now available

Thanks to Michael Elliott at the Australia Museum we now have several issues of Proctos, the proctotrupoid newsletter, scanned as PDFs and available for your perusal. Based on the volume/issue numbers we have I suspect we're missing a few. As far as I can tell, Proctos isn't available on the Web anywhere. Do you know where we can find any missing issues? (see also the ISH publications page)

• volume 1, issue 1 (PDF)
• volume 1, issue 2 (PDF)
• volume 2, issue 1 (missing?)
• volume 2, issue 2 (PDF)
• volume 3, issue 1 (PDF)
• others?

Update: We got a copy of volume 2, issue 1, so now the question is - are there any issues after volume 3, issue 1?

Hamuli volume 2, issue 1 published

The next iteration of the ISH newsletter, Hamuli, was published today - a beefy 35 pages worth of articles, photos, and miscellanea. If you were a member last year you should have gotten the link as an email from the secretary (me!). This issue will be available to members only until August, 2011, and future issues will open for members in good standing to publish free of charge. Membership has its privileges! Why not join or renew today? There are multiple ways to join or renew membership in the International Society of Hymenopterists:

• electronically via Paypal
• old skool way, by check (with the membership form PDF)

Hamuli accepting submissions until January 15

We're accepting submissions for Hamuli (volume 2, issue 1) until January 15, 2011. The goal is to publish this issue by the end of January. Please send anything you might want to include—poems, jokes, photos, news, announcements, specimens for exchange, methods, opinions, whatever—as .rtf, .doc, or .docx or, for images, as .jpg or .tif. You can email your submission to andy_deans@ncsu.edu.

Previous issues of Hamuli can be found on our ISH publications page.

New Membership Form Now Online

Our yearly membership drive is about to begin! Membership has been down the past few years but we are hoping to dramatically change this trend with new initiatives by the society.

First we are expanding our session at the Entomological Society of America Meeting to incorporate a series of talks that would be interesting to anyone with a fascination for Hymenoptera or fun and adventurous fieldwork. This year you'll find us Sunday, December 12, 2010 from 1:00 PM-5:00 PM in the Ascot (Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center) in San Diego. Our yearly business meeting will follow the talks. Session details (speakers, times, etc.) are listed on this blog.

Secondly we are moving in 2011 to an open access publication model. More information about the new look of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research will be discussed at the ESA business meeting (details above) and on this Website.

Thirdly the ISH newsletter Hamuli is in rapid production. Deadline for the next issue is 31 December 2010. We'd love to have your stories from the field, news items, interesting or funny photos, opinion pieces, jokes, poems, etc. Whatever you think is newsworthy. If you missed it the last issue of Hamuli is available for download here.

You can renew (or join!) online using PayPal or by sending us a check or credit card information in the mail. Please see the membership page for forms, details and contact information.

ISH at the ESA 2010 Annual Meeting

It's that time of year again. December 12, the day of our next ISH symposium and business meeting, is rapidly approaching, and we are looking forward to what will definitely be a fun program. Here's the list of talks, which mainly focus on fieldwork:

• 1:00 PM – Welcoming Remarks
• 1:05 PM – Ant diversity in the pine forest – a comparison of east Texas and Belize. Jerry L. Cook, Sam Houston State University
• 1:25 PM – Eucharitids and fire ants - Systematics and Biological Control - when the rubber meets the road in Dominica. John Heraty, University of California-Riverside
• 1:45 PM – Bees, sea breeze, and MPs: Establishing bee species inventories at U.S. Naval Base Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Seán Brady, Smithsonian Institution; Sam Droege, USGS
• 2:05 PM – Parasites and inquilines of Trypoxyon manni (Crabronidae) in Trinidad, West Indies. Allan W. Hook, St. Edward's University
• 2:25 PM – Litter-mania in Honduras: Project LLAMA 2010 Field Season. John Longino, The Evergreen State College; Robert S. Anderson, Canadian Museum of Nature
• 2:45 PM – Field notes from Down Under: Accumulating Aculeates in Australia. Craig M. Brabant, University of Wisconsin; Laura Breitkreuz, Museum für Naturkunde; Stefanie Krause, Museum für Naturkunde
• 3:05 PM – ISH Business Meeting 

Following the business portion of the symposium we'll gather for drinks and casual socializing. Do you have any items for the agenda? Will you be attending the ESA annual meeting this year? See you then!

Hamuli - the new ISH newsletter

The inaugural issue of Hamuli (PDF, 3.8MB), the new Society newsletter, is now available! And the amount of content provided by ISH members was truly astounding. Thanks to everyone for helping make this happen! Feedback is greatly appreciated, so that future issues will be even better. (I know the layout isn't perfect, but what else should be fixed?) I used Adobe InDesign (CS3) to put it together, so if anyone knows any tricks or wants to have the original .indd file let me know!

The deadline for volume 2, issue 1 is December 31, 2010, so get your writer's caps on!

UPDATE: A. Dal Molin pointed out that I introduced a typo into her article about Pe. Moure. He passed away this year (2010), not in 2009. My apologies to all. This typo is fixed in the newest PDF version, available at the link above.

follow-up to the modestly bold proposal

Well, I think the suggestion that we harness the spirit of our past hymenopteran newsletters and channel it into a new ISH newsletter has really resonated with some of our members. In the run up to our business meeting in Kőszeg next month I thought I would share some of the comments and suggestions for newsletter names:

• Great ideas for the newsletter. You are right that we did wait in anticipation for the next of our specialty newsletters. We all knew who Roy Snelling, Jim Carpenter, and Chris Starr were and what their opinions were. Also the hundreds of others who contributed.  For a name we have to think about the audience -- just us, the greater public, both, or some other population or combo.  Should the title be humorous, amusing, catchy (like NewsISH, or something more relating to our beloved creatures (perhaps Sphecos n.s., which ties the past to the future, just as some journals used to do).  If we want an anatomical or hymenoptera-specific title, something like The Propodeum would do well, as it distinguishes our critters from all others.
• I think this is a great initiative and one that is well overdue.  As a suggestion, what about something clear and simple, such as Hym News.
• When a name was being chosen for the journal, someone inventive suggested Hamuli. I don't know who came up with it, but I thought it was a wonderful name.
• Just to float an idea - I know we are also looking for cool articles, but one of the features of older (mostly more specialist) newsletters is that people contributed articles that featured who and what was going on in their lab, requests for info/specimens, etc. I for one would be happy to supply an update of what's going on here...As one who is rapidly becoming one of the old farts in the field, I am always happy to hear about all the new start-ups!
• I think I prefer a more generalized name for the newsletter.
• That’s a great idea! Sphecos is a good model, and since it ended along with Arnold Menke’s retirement it has always been a major source of information for me. It was also just fun to read what is going on worldwide. The good thing was the mixture of serious scientific information and personal biogarphies, collecting reports and all sorts of fun. What was really a success in Sphecos was short biographies of hymenopterists, which Arnold has organized for a while. This could be a good idea for a regular section in the new newsletter, perhaps one biography per issue. So I strongly support this idea, and I promise to submit brief contributions regularly.
• The name: Sphecos was great, because it is just the Greek work for wasp. There are other similarily generalized words from Latin and Greek, but none of them is really convincing. As an example, Bembix, but there is a German journal with that name. There are plenty of possible taxon-names. My favourite in sphecids is Zyzzyx, a South American bembicine genus. The name is quite complicated but has a high recognition value. The etymology was not given in the original description, but it is assumed that it refers to the buzzing sound of a flying wasp. A combination of a taxon name and the information what it really is (as a subheading) would perhaps be a good solution: Zyzzyx – The ISH-Newsletter or better Zyzzyx – The hymenopterists newsletter. Another idea that just came to my mind: WaspNews. Perhaps also in combination with the subheading: WaspNews – The ISH-Newsletter or WaspNews – The hymenopterists newsletter.
• One of the most valuable contributions to Chalcid Forum was John Huber's yearly listing of publications pertaining to chalcidoids. Some of us had our own bibliographic searches, but John's was always the most complete. Such a list for hyms would be most useful if it did not become too grand. Of course posted on the internet it probably doesn't make much difference how much stuff is in the newsletter. We were constrained by costs.
• We are delighted by the idea and give it our full support and encouragement. We favour the name Sphecos in memory of Menke’s extremely useful production by that name. We were very sorry that it ceased and have greatly missed it.
• I'd prefer something generalized like ISH Newsletter, because this properly reflects the content. But I would clearly object Sphecos, Scaphion, Symphytos, etc. because this parallels already existing or formerly existing newsletter titles. In addition, the title should cover all Hymenoptera taxa.  If the pretty unemotional title ISH Newsletter should not be accepted, I'd therefore prefer something like Hyms or purely Hymenoptera.
• Here is a suggestion for the newsletter name:  The Hamuli.

Please keep the comments coming, either as emails to the secretary (my email is andy_deans at ncsu dot edu), comments to this post, or as direct suggestions at the ICH in Hungary.

UPDATE (1 June 2010): A couple more suggestions/comments appeared in my inbox recently:

• I vote for Hamuli, which is distinctively hymenopterological, short, easy to remember (and spell) and arguably kinder to the ears than, say, The Propodeum or Hyms. I’m not in favour of titles like Wasp News or Sphecos because they seem to exclude some types of hymenopterans. My second choice would be ISH News.
• I would vote for the most generalized one. It would be difficult to find a taxon name or a body part that would please everyone and that hasn't been taken yet.
• I’d prefer a more general title, like ISH News – although the suggestion NewsISH is clever. If memory serves, the name Hamuli was something Scott Shaw came up with when we were considering names for J. Hym. Res. – credit where credit is due. It’s not bad at all.
• I like Hamuli! The word is an eye catcher and sounds interesting (like the content will be, hopefully), and it is an autapomorphic character for the Hymenoptera. I agree with those comments objecting to using an old name for new newsletter. At least for me Sphecos was of less interest than the Chalcid Forum and Symphytos. Also, I wouldn’t call it newsletter but bulletin, sounds more serious. My suggestion: Hamuli – The Hymenopterist’s Bulletin. For me the most important reasons to read a newsletter is to see what others are currently doing, field and museum notes, an overview of recent publications, and requests for material.