First International Arthropod Biocontrol Symposium

The 1st International Symposium on Biological Control of Arthropods (ISBCA) was held in Honolulu, Hawaii on 14-18 July 2002. This symposium launched a new series of meetings that will be held every 4 years in future - conceived to be the analogue of the long running and highly effective International Symposia on the Biological Control of Weeds, which have been going since 1960. The lack of such a forum until now has held back the discipline of arthropod biocontrol, the organizers felt, and made it less effective in meeting new challenges (which are many and growing) to its practical use. The intent of the initiators of the ISBCA is to create a meeting for practitioners that can build cohesion within the discipline, and foster discussions of issues affecting their work.

The proceedings of the meeting, compiled by Roy Van Driesche at the University of Massachusetts, have now been published and are available free on request*. They are available in a bound, printed edition (573 pp. in length) and also on CD. They will make a valuable addition to any biocontrol library.

The proceedings are divided into two parts. The first part includes 66 oral presentations (all but 13 included as full papers) and the second part contains work presented as posters, 56 in all. The volume provides a unique compilation of the state of research, implementation and thinking in the field of arthropod biological control in 2002, with the main presentations organized as follows:

• Issues and techniques (17 papers): Future expanded use of classical biological control; Methods to colonize, evaluate and monitor natural enemies; Molecular methods in classical biological control; Modelling and theory as tools to clarify causes of success or failure of biocontrol projects.
• Augmentation of natural enemies (15 papers): Successes in augmentative biological control; Economics of production and use of reared natural enemies; Post-release dispersal, distribution, and impact of augmented natural enemies in field settings; Survey of actual and potential use in outdoor crops.
• Conservation of natural enemies (18 papers): Nectar feeding by parasitoids; Alternative hosts and habitat refuges for natural enemies; Effects on natural enemies of using Bt crops in IPM systems; Pesticide effects on natural enemies.
• Classical biological control (16 papers): Importation biological control; Monitoring for effects of biocontrol agents on nontarget organisms.

  *Send mailing details to: Richard Reardon, FHTET, USDA Forest Service,
  180 Canfield Street,
  Morgantown, WV 26505, USA.
  Email: rreardon@fs.fed.us
  Fax: + 1 304 285 1564

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