ispi

International Society for Pest Information

Report of the 11th Meeting

22nd October 2020, online meeting

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

Jürgen Gross, the current President opened and was also chairing the meeting. Bernhard

Zelazny, the current executive officer was nominated as rapporteur. A list of the members

attending the meeting is attached as Annex I.

3. Adoption of the agenda

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

adopted.

4. Election of officers

The ballot which was distributed on September 18. 2020 is shown in Annex I. It consists of the

list of candidates for the election of officers and of the text of changes in the ISPI articles. A total

of 8 ballots were completed and returned by the members as email attachments. These files

were opened during the meeting and counted. The election for the President and Vice-President

produced the following results:

Olaf Zimmermann (7 votes)

Charles Vincent (1 vote)

Olaf Zimmermann and Charles Vincent accepted their elections as President and Vice-President

respectively.

The ISPI members participating in the meeting unanimously expressed their gratitude to Jürgen

Gross and Stefan Vidal for the many years of service they have provided to the Society as

President, Vice President and Finance Officer.

Election of Executive Officer:

Bernhard Zelazny (7 votes)

Finance Committee:

Marcin Nowicki agreed to serve as Finance Officer together with Charles Vincent.

Changes to the articles of the society:

The proposed changes in the articles were adopted by 7 of 8 votes.

5. Financial statements for the years 2016 to 2019

Marcin Nowicki presented the financial statements for the years 2016 to 2019 on behalf of the

Finance Committee. These are summarized in Annex III and were accepted by the members. At

the end of 2019, the financial balance of the society was €1,433. It is expected that the

remaining funds will be spent in 2021 and that the bank account of the society can than be

closed.

6 + 7. ISPI activities since March 2016, current status of the Pest Information Wiki and

discussion about the future of ISPI

Bernhard Zelazny reported on the activities of ISPI since March 2016. The report is attached as

Annex IV. Most of the activities concerned improvements and additions to the Pest Information

Wiki (Pestinfo-Wiki), as well as the ISPI database. Among others, a new internet site called ISPI

data was started. This site will make it easier to query and download data about pests, plant

diseases, weeds and natural enemies.

The discussion by ISPI members focused mainly on the question how the Pestinfo-Wiki and the

ISPI database can continue in the long term. Currently, this work is mainly done by Bernhard

Zelazny, who would like to turn it over to others little by little, due to his advanced age. The

Pestinfo-Wiki is part of the biowikifarm which is operated by the Museum für Naturkunde

(Natural History Museum) in Berlin. Therefore, the software maintenance of the biowikifarm,

including the Pestinfo-Wiki, is done by the IT section of the Museum. The new site ISPI-data is

on a commercial server (1&1 IONOS SE) and work on ISPI-data is sometimes supported by an

IT company in Darmstadt (Xisio Informationsssysteme GmbH). The comments by ISPI

members on the future of the society is summarized in the following points:

 For the long-term continuation of the Pest Information Wiki and the ISPI database, it will

be necessary to find one or more organisations who would be interested to work

together with ISPI on the wiki and the database.

 EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization) and NAPPO (North

American Plant Protection Organization) were mentioned as examples of organisations

which might be interested to collaborate with ISPI.

 Activities which make ISPI better known would help to find partner-organisations for

such collaboration.

 It was suggested to create a twitter account to highlight some of the ISPI activities.

Marcin Nowicki and Bernhard Zelazny would work on this together.

 The ISPI members present during the meeting agreed to work on a publication which

would described new aspects of the Pestinfo-Wiki and the ISPI data internet site.

 It was suggested to incorporate in the wiki pages more links to other internet sites.

8. Other matters

It was suggested to hold the next ISPI membership meeting in 2021.

Juergen Gross Bernhard Zelazny

Chairman Rapporteur

________________________________________________________

Annex I

Participants in the 11th ISPI Membership Meeting

Members, who participated in the Meeting:

Jürgen Gross

JKI Dossenheim, Germany

Marcin Nowicki

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN, U.S.A.

Stefan Vidal

University of Göttingen, Germany

Charles Vincent

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu QC Canada

Bernhard Zelazny

Griesheim, Germany

Olaf Zimmermann

Center for Agricultural Technology Augustenberg, Karlsruhe, Germany

Members, who participated in the election by email, but were not present during the

meeting:

Jan Breithaupt

Regina G. Kleespies

__________________________________________________________

Annex II

International Society for Pest Information

Ballot for the 11th Meeting (22nd October 2020, online meeting)

A. Election of Officers

1. President and Vice-President

Place an X in front of only one candidate! Candidates are listed alphabetically. The

largest number of votes will elect the President, the 2nd largest number the

Vice-President. The 3rd candidate will be invited to join the Finance Committee.

Nowicki, Marcin*

Entomology and Plant Pathology - University of Tennessee, Institute of Agriculture,

Knoxville TN, U.S.A.. Research and teaching on plant pathology, phylogenetics

and plant physiology.

Vincent, Charles

Research and Development Centre - Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada,

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu QC, Canada. Research on insect pests and diseases of

fruit trees, grapevine and berries, biological control.

Zimmermann, Olaf

Center for Agricultural Technology Augustenberg, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Identification of agricultural pests, research on the biology of pests and beneficials,

plant quarantine.

* Marcin Nowicki is only running for Vice-President.

Other Candidates (you may volunteer your services, or suggest another

candidate):

2. Executive Officer

Zelazny, Bernhard

Retired, no current affiliation

alternative/volunteer:

B. Proposed changes in the articles of the Society

Changes are marked in bold. Deleted previous text is crossed out.

11. The Finance Committee consists of the vice president and one additional member, who

is at least two and not more than three members, who are not a member of the

Executive Committee. It verifies that the expenditures of the Society are in accordance with

its aims and prepares a report to the Society members for each calendar year. In case

there are no financial resources, the Finance Committee remains inactive.

12. The Executive and Finance Committees are elected during the founding meeting.

Subsequently, elections are held every three years during the Society meetings (see articles

14 to 16). If a member of the Executive Committee leaves the Society before the end of his

or her term, the remaining Committee members appoint a replacement for the rest of the

three-year period. In case no meeting is announced, the old Executive Committee will

remain active.

14. The president decides on the dates and location of Society meetings, which may be held on

the occasion of other scientific meetings or through the internet (video conference). Such

meetings should be held at least every three years, if possible, and will also be held if they

are requested by at least 5% of the Society members.

I accept to the above changes to paragraphs 11, 12 and 14 of the

articles of our Society.

I reject the above changes.

___________________________________________________________

Annex III

11th ISPI Membership Meeting

Financial Statements

Accounts for 2016

(currency Euro)

item

income

expenses

opening balance, 1

January 2016

4,019.68

software consultancies and wiki works

1,864.44

costs for internet page and e-mail account

149.76

bank charges

34.00

total

4,019.68

2,048.20

balance as of 31

Dec. 2016

1,971.48

Presented by the ISPI Finance Committee (Jan. 2017)

Marcin Nowicki

Stefan Vidal

Accounts for 2017

(currency Euro)

item

income

expenses

opening balance, 1

January 2017

1,971.48

costs for internet page and e-mail account

149.76

bank charges

18.60

total

1,971.48

168.36

balance as of 31

Dec. 2017

1,803.12

Presented by the ISPI Finance Committee (Feb. 2018)

Marcin Nowicki

Stefan Vidal

Accounts for 2018

(currency Euro)

item

income

expenses

opening balance, 1

January 2018

1,803.12

donation

205.00

costs for internet page and e-mail account

149.76

bank charges

18.70

total

2,008.12

168.46

balance as of 31

Dec. 2018

1,839.66

Presented by the ISPI Finance Committee (Jan. 2019)

Marcin Nowicki

Stefan Vidal

Accounts for 2019

(currency Euro)

item

income

expenses

opening balance, 1

January 2019

1,839.66

software consultancies (website, SQL)

238.00

costs for website and e-mail account

149.76

bank charges

18.90

total

1,839.66

406.66

balance as of 31

Dec. 2019

1,433.00

Presented by the ISPI Finance Committee (Feb. 2020)

Marcin Nowicki

Stefan Vidal

__________________________________________________________

Annex IV

11th ISPI Membership Meeting

Status and summary of ISPI activities since 2016

Since the last ISPI membership meeting in April 2016, the expansion and improvements on the

Pest Information Wiki have continued. The number of publications entered into the wiki has now

reached almost 178,000, with each publication containing information on the covered pests, and

in most cases their distribution, hostplants and bioagents in a database format. The number of

pages covering species of pests diseases and weeds has reached 6,400, those for beneficials

1,700. These include lists of the corresponding distribution data, host plants and natural

enemies. However, this is only about one third of the pest/diseases/weed and beneficial species

in the ISPI database, with the species not yet on the wiki usually being covered by fewer fewer

than 10 publications.

The larger amounts of data now available has made it necessary to develop new approaches

for presenting and displaying the available information. For common pest and diseases, the wiki

database functions have become inadequate to generate long lists of distribution data or long

list of the host plants dynamically. Therefore, long lists are now prepared separately every 6

weeks and are loaded as text pages.

The biowikifarm which hosts the Pest Information Wiki and is located at the Natural History

Museum in Berlin has experienced some software problems at the end of 2017 and the

beginning of 2018, but is running now very well. In addition we are using a second server,

operated by a commercial company (Ionos) to take over part of the data display and processing

needs. This aspect has only started in 2020 and will continue for the next years. This new site

has been called "ISPI data" and should be regarded as an extension of the Pest Information

Wiki. Work on this site has started with listing the pests-diseases-weeds for specific crops, see

the following site which is still under construction:

https://www.pestinfo.org/ISPIdata/public/products

Since out founding meeting, almost 20 years ago, the internet has steadily expanded, and due

to more information now being available, interest in our society, our wiki and our database has

somewhat declined. Internal discussion on this aspect has started and further discussions are

planned for the current meeting. So far, the discussion have resulted in a) changes in the

articles of ISPI as proposed in the ballot for this meeting, and b) the suggestion to make our

data more widely available to interested scientists. Our database has become available as

Excel files on ISPI data since March 2020, see

https://www.pestinfo.org/ISPIdata/public/downloads

The data will be updated twice a year. See also the recent publication under

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/epp.12667

for a quarantine analysis using our data. For the longer term, it would be highly desirable to

establish a permanent collaboration with an organization which is active in the field of pest

management and which is interested in our data.