IUSSI-NAS

Erin Cole has been selected as the 2013 recipient of the William L. and Ruth D. Nutting Research Grant for basic termite biology. Erin is a Ph.D. candidate at Northeastern University, where she is working under the guidance of Rebeca Rosengaus. Her project “Transgenerational Immunity in the Dampwood Termite Zooterompsis angusticollis” will explore the ways in which parents provision their offspring when faced with an immunologically challenging environment. Erin will receive $2500 to further her research.

The NAS/IUSSI is making US$500 available to each of 10 dues-paying student members so that they can attend the 2013 meeting of the Entomological Society of America. This meeting will be held in Austin, Texas USA, during November 10-13. Students planning to give an oral or poster presentation at the meeting are invited to submit an application for funds. Applications are due by May 15, 2013 and the final selection will be announced by June 1. The full announcement can be found here.

The Journal of Bioeconomics actively solicits papers for a Special Issue on “Social Biomimicry – Potential and Limitations for Study of Human Organizational Design”. Guest editor: Jennifer Fewell, School of Life Sciences and Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.

Social animals, particularly social insect, have evolved tightly integrated societies. They are highly effective in solving coordination and motivation problems inherent in the social organization of production. Honed by natural selection, their solutions may inspire the organizational (re-) design of human societies and their productive activities. The Special Issue is intended to shed light on promises, problems, and limitations of such a social biomimicry for coordination and motivation problems in human societies and organizations.

Theoretical, empirical, methodological, and comparative works on this topic are equally welcome. All submissions will be subjected to a review process with reviewers of appropriate professional expertise. Submitted papers should contain original work not exceeding a maximum of 9000 words in length. Submissions must be made online via the Journal’s website: http://www.springer.com/economics/environmental/journal/10818. Please mention the Special Issue in an accompanying note. Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2013.

The Journal of Bioeconomics, a Springer Science Journal, is devoted to a creative interdisciplinary dialogue between biologists, economists, and social sciences more generally. For regular issues, the Journal of Bioeconomics welcomes submissions promoting an exchange between, and interaction of, theories, methods, and data from biology and economics. The Journal’s editorial team has changed in 2012. It is now edited by Ulrich Witt (economics, editor-in-chief), Michael T. Ghiselin (biology, co-editor), and David Sloan Wilson (biology, co-editor). For any further information please e-mail to: witt@evoecon.mpg.de

The North American Section of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects is proud to announce that Adrian Smith (Arizona State University Ph.D. 2011) was selected as the recipient of the 2012 Eickwort Student Award. Adrian was a student of section members Jürgen Liebig and Bert Hölldobler, both faculty at ASU. Details can be found here.

A working group for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is attempting to compile a qualitative database of social traits for all social species worldwide. They would appreciate your taking 10-15 minutes to fill out the attached questionnaire. The answers will be compiled into a wiki-style database, which will become available through NESCent.

https://duke.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bvVe3jeuJCUTnGA

The primary objective of the project is to examine commonalities and differences in social traits within and among taxa, with the ultimate question of how these traits inform us about what constitutes types of social living and the factors that drive them. Please feel free to email Jennifer Fewell (j.fewell@asu.edu – invertebrates) and/or Andy Russell (a.russell@exeter.ac.uk – vertebrates) with any questions you may have.

Insectes Sociaux, the journal of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI), is looking for authors who can definitely commit themselves to writing a high-quality review article. We are also interested in review articles by graduate students, for example in collaboration with their academic supervisor.

The review’s subject must be clearly delimited, directly related to social arthropods, carry implications of wider scientific interest, and be timely in that many authors have published recently on it since the last published review (if any). Treatment of recent studies must be exhaustive. Review manuscripts are subject to the standard peer review process, so acceptance is not guaranteed. Manuscripts that mainly summarize published or unpublished data by the review’s author(s) will not be considered.  

The maximum length of review articles is 10 printed pages (very roughly 65,000 characters including spaces). As a small token of our appreciation, the corresponding author will receive 200 € per accepted review article.

 Before starting to write, authors should send a short summary (0.5-1 A4) to: Michiel B. Dijkstra, associate editor in charge of review articles, e-mail: michiel.b.dijkstra@gmail.com. This summary should delimit the intended subject, explain why a review would be timely, and briefly indicate the structure, including a list of topics that will be addressed.

Sanford Porter and Dan Wojcik have recently uploaded an updated version of FORMIS, a composite of several ant literature databases. It now has about 54,000 records about the world’s ant literature. The database is designed to allow convenient searches of titles, keywords and abstracts when available. Citations from this database can be exported to create specialty databases or personal reprint indexes. Many records now have links to PDF reprints.