History of the International Symposium on the Biology and Ecology of Galling Arthropods

The concept of a gall-inducing arthropod symposium was developed by Drs. William Mattson and Yuri Baranchinkov in 1992. The meeting was organized under the guidelines of the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO). The first meeting was held at the Sukachev Institute of Forest and Wood, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, August 9-13, 1993, in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, with Drs Yuri Baranchikov and Peter Price as the organizers. The proceedings of the symposium were published as The Ecology and Evolution of Gall-Forming Insects edited by Peter Price, William Mattson and Yuri Baranchikov (1994) as United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, North Central Forest Experiment Station General Technical Report NC-174. This publication had 22 papers with 45 contributors. Subjects included ecology and population dynamics, effects of the physical environment on gall-inducers, biodiversity and distribution, genetic variation in host plant resistance, and evolutionary perspectives. These themes have prevailed in the subsequent meetings.

The success of the first symposium prompted plans for additional meetings in other countries. The second symposium from August 14-19, 1997, was held in Mátrafüred, Hungary, and organized by Gyuri Csoka of the Hungarian Forest Research Institute. The meeting included 32 oral presentations and 12 posters. Participants were from around the world and 20 countries, representing the typical international nature of the four symposia to date: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Republic of China, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the USA.The proceedings of the symposium were published as The Biology of Gall-Inducing Arthropods, edited by Gyuri Csoka, William Mattson, Graham Stone, and Peter Price (1998), as North Central Research Station General Technical Report NC-199 from the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

The third symposium was held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, from January 15-18, 2002. The meeting was organized by Schalk Louw, Jeanne Stoltz and Jan Giliomee. There were 49 participants. A field trip was included to a conservation area of Fynbos vegetation near Hermanus on the south coast, east of Cape Town. No publication resulted from this meeting.

The fourth symposium was held in Kyoto, Japan from 5-9 September of 2005. The organizers were Junichi Yukawa, Takayuki Ohgushi, Kenichi Ozaki, who also served as editors of the publication: Galling Arthropods and their Associates: Ecology and Evolution (K. Ozaki et al., editors. 2006) published by Springer-Verlag, Tokyo. In this publication 26 papers were included written by a total of 75 authors.

The 5th symposium was held in Serro do Cipo in Brazil from 9-14 August 2009. The organisers were Wilson Fernandes, Peter Price and Heikki Roininen. There were 30 oral presentations at the meeting. A field trip into the Cerrado vegetation of Serro do Cipo provided an excellent opportunity to see, photograph and understand this area with exceptionally high diversity of galling arthropods. At this stage, no proceedings are available from the symposium.