Annual Report: Ecological Section of BSA
The section sponsored four symposia at the IBC in 1999. Stephen Scheckler organized “Archaeopteris, the world's first forest tree”, Brenda Casper organized “Rooting strategies and below ground competition”, Carol Baskin organized “Ecology and evolution of specialized seed dispersal, dormancy and germination strategies” and Maxine Watson organized “Developmental phenology and its influence on plant ecology”, along with their foreign co-organizers. Section money was used to defray registration expenses for the overseas speakers in these symposia. Because of the IBC, there was no student paper or poster competition in 1999. However, awards ($150 each) were presented to the 1998 competition winners at the 1999 BSA banquet. Jochen Schenk, UC Santa Barbara, won the best student paper award for his presentation “Directional, spatial patterns in a desert community”. Bruce Robart, Illinois State Universiity won for his poster “ Double functional pollination as a transitional stage in the evolution of the beaked floral form among taxonomic varieties of Pedicularis bractaeosa”.
We will again be sponsoring awards for the best student paper and poster at Botany 2000. Judging this year is to be organized by Pati Vitt of the Chicago Botanical Garden. Six papers and two posters have been entered in the competition. These numbers are low. Please encourage your students to participate in next year’s competition. The section also will sponsor a mixer at Botany 2000.
This year we successfully established a section email. Over the course of the coming year, we will seek to convert the email list to a web based listserve and establish links with related listserves established by other BSA sections and related groups outside of the BSA. This listserve hopefully will create a means for greater interaction among section members and serve as an attracter of new members.
Section membership continues to fall. Last year the section dropped below 500 members. With that drop the allotment to the section from the BSA General Fund dropped from $1000 to $700. It is critical that we bring up membership over the coming year.
Maxine Watson
Chair, Ecological Section