Office Bearers
Chair: May Berenbaum
Born: 1953 | Appointed: 2008
Field: Evolution, Education and Outreach
E-mail: maybe@uiuc.edu
Bio: May R. Berenbaum (USA) was born in 1953. Swanlund Professor of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she graduated with a B.S. and honors in biology from Yale University and received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in ecology and evolutionary biology. Since 1980, she has been on the faculty of the Department of Entomology at UIUC, serving as head of the department since 1992.
Her research addresses insect-plant coevolution at multiple levels, including molecular and biochemical adaptations of insects to toxins and impacts of chemical defense on insect distribution and abundance in natural and managed ecosystems, in the United States and recently in the Netherlands and New Zealand. This work has been published in over 220 journal articles and 30 book chapters.
She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Entomological Society of America, and the American Philosophical Society and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She has served as editor of Annual Review of Entomology since 1996 and is on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Journal of Chemical Ecology.
Devoted to fostering scientific literacy, she has authored numerous magazine articles, as well as six books, about insects for the general public. Her book Bugs in the System has been translated into German, Japanese, and Korean.
Deputy Chair: Marec Frantisek
Born: 1957 | Appointed: 2012
Field: Population Genetics
E-mail: marec@entu.cas.cz
Bio: Frantisek Marec (Czech Republic), born in 1957. Director of the Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, both in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. He obtained his PhD in Entomology (insect genetics) in 1987 at the Institute of Entomology.
Since 1990 he has been a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. He has had a long-standing collaboration with Prof. Walther Traut at the University of Lubeck, Germany, where he worked as a Humboldtian in 1991–1992 and 1998. Like many geneticists, he started his career in Drosophila, but soon become fascinated by Lepidoptera genetics. His research has focused on sex chromosomes in Lepidoptera, especially on meiotic pairing, molecular differentiation and evolution, and also applications of the sex chromosomes in genetic control strategies against pest species. In addition, his co-operation with the Insect Pest Control Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria, resulted in a new approach for the construction of genetic sexing strains in lepidopteran pests.
So far Prof. Marec has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and contributed to 4 book chapters. He was also editor of a recently published book on “Molecular Biology and Genetics of the Lepidoptera” (edited by Marian R. Goldsmith and F. Marec, 2010, CRC Press). Since 2001 he has been an Executive Editor of the European Journal of Entomology. He co-organized symposia on insect genetics at the VIth and VIIIth European Congress of Entomology (ECE).
Secretary/ Treasurer: Myron (Meron) P. Zalucki
Born: 1954 | Appointed: 2004
Field: Ecology, Behaviour
E-mail: m.zalucki@uq.edu.au
Bio: Myron (Meron) Philip Zalucki (Australia), born in 1954. He completed his first degree, a BSc with first class honours in Zoology, from the Australian National University in 1976 and his Ph.D. in 1982 from Griffith University, Brisbane. Joined the then Department of Entomology at the University of Queensland in 1981 as a part time temporary lecturer and “rose through the ranks” to full Professor in 2001.
He is an insect ecologist by “bent” working on various applied and basic research areas. He uses various model systems to ask questions ranging from the interaction of host chemistry and induced plant defences on oviposition behaviour and early stage caterpillar survival, to the effects of learning on oviposition behaviour at a landscape level and of climate on insect abundance and distribution. He prefers butterfly plant interactions, particularly Monarch butterflies and milkweeds as a model study system.
A substantial amount of his applied research has been on the ecology and biology of Helicoverpa spp., the major pest of Australian field crops, and more recently Diamondback moth, a key pest of horticulture worldwide. He was awarded the Ian MacKerras Medal in 1996 for excellence in Entomology by the Australia Entomological Society. He chaired the organising committee for the XXII International Congress of Entomology held in Brisbane in August 2004. He has worked with colleagues on various entomological problems and questions in China, North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Oman, Italy, Spain, Germany, the South Pacific (Fiji, Samoa and Tonga) and North America (Canada, Mexico and USA).