Messages from:
Division Chair
Division Program Officer
Division Secretary

Division Officers
Annual Report - Physiology Zoology
Program Officer's Report
Publications
Grad. Student Affairs
Bartholomew Award

DCPB: 1997 Spring Newsleter


This Newsletter by Section


Message from the Chair

David W. Towle


Thanks to everyone who participated in the SICB 1996 Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, particularly to Lou Burnett, Malcolm Shick, and Nora Terwilliger for their tribute to Charlotte Mangum, unable to be present because of illness. Charlotte's Past Presidential address, presented skillfully by Nora, gave clear evidence of her sharp wit and ability to turn a phrase, stimulating her listeners toward new insights in comparative respiratory physiology. Thank you, Charlotte.

Thanks also go to symposium organizers Jon Harrison and John Phillips, Allen Gibbs and Lisa Crockett, and Rich Marsh and John Bertram. The three symposia sponsored or co-sponsored by DCPB added much to the value of the meeting.

A special moment in the life of the Division is the recognition of the recipient of the George A. Bartholomew Distinguished Young Investigator Award, presented this year to Stephen Secor, postdoctoral associate in Jared Diamond's laboratory at UCLA. Stephen gave a fine lecture in Albuquerque on "Evolutionary Design of Digestive Response." I am particularly proud to report that the first recipient of the Bartholomew Award, Barbara Block, recently received a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Grant. I am also pleased to announce a major addition to the George A. Bartholomew Fund, a $5,000 gift made anonymously by an admirer of George Bartholomew.

The recipient of the DCPB Best Student Paper Award for the 1996 meeting was Shana K. Goffredi, University of California, Santa Barbara, for the paper entitled "Sulfide Acquisition by the Vent Tubeworm Riftia Pachyptila is Via Diffusion of HS- Rather Than H2S." Thanks to all the participants in the competition and especially to Don Mykles who chaired the judges committee.

I wish to extend a hearty welcome to the two new officers of the division, Chair-Elect Tim Bradley and Program Officer Neal Smatresk. Tim will become Division Chair immediately after the SICB 1998 Annual Meeting in Boston, and Neal is presently serving as Program Officer. Please contact any of the officers with ideas for future planning. We are very interested in seeing the Division grow and prosper!

Finally, I wish to offer my utmost thanks to the past Program Officer, Nora Terwilliger. Nora's energy and imagination in program development were very evident at Albuquerque and will be clearly evident again in Boston in January 1998. Thank you, Nora!

Message from the Program Officer

Neal Smatresk


As the new DCPB Program Officer, I would first like to extend our appreciation to the excellent job done by Nora Terwilliger over the past two years. She has helped guide the Division through a major transition, and established a high standard for those who follow.

The SICB 1996 Annual Meeting in Albuquerque presented a strong collection of symposia and contributed papers from DCPB. The meeting received great coverage in Science, the 17 January 1997 issue, with articles covering "Muscle-Bound Dragonflies" from the symposium organized by Jon Harrison and John Phillips, and "Exotic Deep Sea Lifestyles" highlighting Lamellibranchia. I congratulate all who helped make this meeting a success, and encourage the creative minds of the Division to submit proposals that will allow us to continue to attract this level of attention in upcoming meetings.

The Division has now finalized the program for the SICB 1998 Annual Meeting in Boston. Tim Bradley and Bill Zamer have organized a symposium on "Evolutionary Physiology;" Karen Martin and Richard Strathmann will co-chair a symposium on "Aquatic Organisms, Terrestrial Eggs: Early Development at the Water's Edge" and Charlotte Mangum and Brian McMahon have put together an interdivisional workshop on the "Origin and Further Evolution of Circulatory Systems," as part of the "Major Questions in Animal Biology" mini-series. We hope to have an active program of contributed papers accompanying these symposia. Abstracts will be due August 22, 1997, so it's time to polish up your data sets and get them ready for submission.

The deadline for submitting symposia to the Calgary IUBS meeting in the summer of 1999 has come and gone, but if any of you have great ideas we will try to get them into the pipeline. IUBS meetings are great opportunities for intersociety symposia with CSZ or SEB and they are always great fun, so let's see what we can do.

While it seems far off, plans for the SICB 1999 Annual Meeting in Denver are well underway. In an effort to make timely decisions and expedite review, SICB Program Officer Willy Bemis has requested proposals be submitted by April 15th (of course this deadline is usually a moving target). To date I have received only one proposal. Give me a call at 817/272-2871, or e-mail your ideas to me at smat@albert.uta.edu, and I will give you further instructions on preparing your proposal. In keeping with the regional theme, Denver would be a great place for integrative symposia on high altitude or cold adaptation.

We are still looking for BIG QUESTIONS, to continue the miniseries on "Major Questions in Animal Biology." The organizers of an interesting proposal called "Teaching of Biology and the WWW: Successes from the Front Line" are looking for participants in this workshop from all the divisions. If you are interested, please contact Michael Blum of DCPB (mblum@acpub.duke.edu).

Message from the Secretary

Karen Martin


Minutes of the 1996 DCPB Business MeetingThe meeting was called to order at 5:18 p.m. on December 29, 1996 in Albuquerque, N.M. by Chair David Towle. He welcomed participants, especially first-timers and graduate students.

The Secretary announced the fall election results, the Best Paper and Poster Awards of the 1995 meeting, and the Bartholomew Award recipient and procedures for nominations.

Annual Report

of the Editorial Staff of Physiological Zoology

Charlotte P. Mangum, Editor-in-Chief, Gregory K. Snyder, Associate Editor


Cheryl Jenkins, Managing Editor and Mark Bedell, Graduate Editorial AssistantThe period of July 1995 through June 1996 was productive and full of accomplishments. The journal published 70 manuscripts, some of which were accepted from the Burggren editorship. Of those published, 40 were from the U.S. and 30 from abroad; with 57 primary research reports, seven symposia contributions, five Invited Perspectives and one Technical Comment. In fiscal year 1995-96, 112 manuscripts were submitted, an increase of about 10 percent over the previous year. About half are expected to be published after all revisions are satisfactory. This is similar to the acceptance rate at Journal of Experimental Biology. Since SICB now requires symposium organizers to publish in American Zoologist, future issues may contain few or no symposia.

Among recent and proposed changes, the editorial staff is very proud of the transition to large-page, double-column format and a new cover which began in January 1997. This change not only enhances the presentation, but reduces the costs to the University of Chicago Press (UCP) and the cost of reprints since the number of pages per article/volume will be smaller. To prospective authors: The editors urge planning of tables and figures according to the format, by designing them for either single- (preferably) or double-column width.

Another change, especially welcome to authors, centers on publication lag time. Last year, 11 months was required between acceptance and publication. Charlotte Mangum negotiated with UCP to get a temporary increase in the number of manuscripts per volume, to bring the lag time down to about six months by mid- to late 1997.

For the future, the editorial staff is working with UCP to bring PZ to the electronic age. A number of steps are involved in this process. First, PZ now has a page with the UCP web site at http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/PZ which may be reached via the SICB site or any of the editorial staff sites: http://warthog.cc.wm.edu/biology/ mangum.html or http://spot.coloradoedu/~snydergk.html. At the mo-ment, basic information is given, but by the Spring 1997 issue, the table of contents of the most recent issue will be displayed and a listing of manuscripts accepted for future issues. The editorial staff proposed a section for "What's New," which will contain news items, information on special issues, and so on. We note that UCP has published one of their journals electronically. How soon PZ might appear in this format awaits 1997 discussions. UCP has also agreed to sponsor two new services with funds to employ statistical consultants and skilled writers on an ad hoc basis to consult on manuscripts with merit for publication, but lacking in exposition of data presentation.

Finally, the editorial staff thanks the 10 members who rotated off the Editorial Board for their many contributions. They are: Marvin Bernstein, Cynthia Carey, Andrew Cossins, Martin Feder, Jeremy Fields, Manfred Grieshaber, Peter Hochachka, Raymond Huey, Kiyoaki Kuwasawa and Roger Seymour.

The editorial staff hopes that Division members will think of PZ first when planning their submissions. We hope we can continue to encourage the large number of submissions from abroad and that we can enlarge the scope of submissions so that the journal accurately reflects the diversity of interests of DCPB.

Program Officer's Report


Nora Terwilliger congratulated symposium organizers at this meeting. She asked for feedback on the interdivisional sessions and the new method of running the poster sessions, with posters up for a day-and-a-half. She discussed the large number of proposed symposia for Boston's meeting and the possible problems or conflicts that could arise with scheduling. In the future, some limit on number of symposia per Division may be imposed; this year DCPB has five of the 10 symposium proposals. The organizers of next year's symposia were invited to briefly introduce their topics to the group.

Of special interest is the concept behind the symposium on "Origin and Further Evolution of Circulatory Systems," initiated by Charlotte Mangum and now organized by Brian McMahon, that is scheduled for the SICB 1998 Annual Meeting in Boston. This is the first in what we hope will be a series of half-day, very general symposia on topics of wide, interdivisional interest and usefulness in teaching. It is hoped that DCPB will continue to have one each year, and that other Divisions will follow our lead.

Publications


Greg Snyder, Associate Editor of Physiological Zoology, reported (see page 28). David Towle thanked Martin Feder for his work on the American Zoologist Editorial Board. The new board member from DCPB is John Phillips.

Peter deFur reported on the Public Affairs Committee, working with media and outside agencies to increase the visibility and impact of the Society and this Division, and to promote comparative physiology. Recent successes include an article in Science, the cover and a two-page interview with Lou Burnett in Science News, articles in Albuquerque papers, television coverage of meeting topics, and spots on public radio. They also work with the NSF.

Stacia Sower, National Science Foundation, discussed funding and a proposed change in integrative biology program, from "Integrative Animal Biology" to "Comparative Physiology and Endocrinology." This was termed "a new label on the same can" by some. She welcomes input, questions and suggestions from members.

Graduate Student Affairs


Tom Vandergon reported on the results of the first research award competition for support of graduate student research. Seven awards were given from 24 applications, ranging from $500 to $800. Graduate students are encouraged to apply for next year's awards by December 1, 1997.

David Towle called for volunteers for a new Graduate Student/ Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative, as Brian Gaschen has graduated.

Kathy Packard explained the goal of the Development Fund, to provide $125,000, supplemented by the general fund, in order to support student Grants-in-Aid of Research. The committee will be contacting funding agencies, but she encouraged members to support this internally as well.

Meeting was adjourned at 6:30 p.m.

Bartholomew Award


DCPB is soliciting nominations for the Bartholomew Award. The Bartholomew Award recognizes a distinguished young investigator (within seven years post-Ph.D.) in comparative physiology, comparative biochemistry, and related functional fields. The recipient presents a special lecture at the Annual Meeting. Past recipients are Barbara Block, Peter Wainwright, Michael Dickinson and Stephen Secor.

Self-nominations are encouraged and should be accompanied by a current curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation, and reprints of three recent publications. Letters of nomination should include a brief description of the nominee's research accomplishments. Nominations should be submitted by May 30, 1997, to: Dr. Robert Roer, Chair
Bartholomew Award Committee
Univ. of N.C. at Wilmington
601 S. College Rd.
Wilmington, NC 28403-3297
E-mail:
roer@uncwil.edu

The award, which is sponsored by DCPB, was named in honor of George A. Bartholomew, who championed young students throughout his career. Recently $5,000 was given to the Bartholomew Fund anonymously by an admirer of George Bartholomew. Please send your donations to the SICB Business Office in Chicago.


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