Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Bulleted items are action items! Meeting began at 0800. Fred Baker is current secretary, and will be chair in 2008-2009; Ken Raffa will succeed him as secretary. Project Renewal Project is scheduled to terminate in 2009. Deadline for renewal proposal is Sept. 30 2009. Stella suggests that it might be good to get in by Jan. 15th (2009) deadline. Therefore to write proposal during a meeting, would need to meet in Fall 2008. Meeting in fall might attract more pathogen people. Maybe alternate annual meetings between WFIWC and WIFDWC. Fall meeting in Reno in conjunction with ESA Nov. 16-19, 2008. We will meet the Friday and Saturday before, November 14 and 15, 2008. Fred Baker will make arrangements with the hotel. Stella will figure out the rules about international participants. New objectives: last time took historic 3 objectives, collapsed into 2 and came up with new area that included emerging issues. We should keep the insect-microbrial interactions as the forefront, and consider expanding to other insects besides just bark beetles and also include hardwoods in addition to conifers. After extensive discussion the following emerged: Our new title: Interactions of emerging threats and bark beetle-microbial dynamics in forest ecosystems. New objectives: Objective 1: Characterize the diversity and interactions among tree hosts, bark beetles, their natural enemies, and associated microbes. Objective 2: Characterize feedbacks between bark beetle-microbial interactions and forest ecosystem processes. Objective 3: Integrate and apply knowledge gained from obj. 1 and 2 to forest ecosystems as influenced by emerging issues such as invasive species, global climate change, changing land use patterns and fire regimes, and multiple and conflicting societal demands. Stella: important to have critical mass participation and value gained for individual scientists and regions. Much more scrutiny now on renewal projects. Need to decide if it is worth it go through the whole process of renewal. Is it just 1 more meeting to attend? We must demonstrate in proposal compelling reasons to continue. Ok to keep new objectives. May need to change them later as we get new people to join and they provide input. Participation: Stella: once a group is formed, call for participants goes out across country and directors can look at it and see if there are people in their region who might fit. Most members are recruited, however, by contacts of members. Many who would like to come do not because they do not receive funding. Is it possible to get funds for travel or salary if you are not part of land grant institute? All ag experiment station directors get hatch and Mcintire Stennis funds. Some parts of these must go to multi-state projects. Federal and state agencies may look at participation differently. They must see that involvement in multi-state project is important. Members have to appeal to their admin to get funding. Suggestions made to connect with invasives groups and to ask people who no longer come why they do not come. Is the focus of group too broad? The group used to be very dynamic and large, a much more focused group to brain dump together. However, don't want it to be too entomological oriented. Need to engage pathogen and fungal people. How do we achieve this? Should we invite extension and management people. Dove-tail meetings so more can participate, like doing it with WFIWC. Can we connect emerging issues with management. We need to engage the younger cohort of new professionals. If a person is not willing to be engaged, they should give up their spot, especially if they are receiving funds, but not contributing. As we plan for the future, keep in mind who really wants to be involved. Start fresh, and only include people who are actively participating. List of people who might be interested in coming to fall meeting and help with proposal: Richard Hofstetter (would have to replace Tom DeGomez, so wait until NAU hires into the position and then contact that person), BC, Alberta and other Canadians, Matt Ayres,Ken Raffa,Jeremy Alison, Steve Seybold,Laurie Eckert, Juri Hulcer, Tom Harrington, Adman Usonaphick,Diana Six, Nadir Erbligin, Andrew Storer, Scott Templeton (at Clemson),Dave Wood, Dave Rizzo, Tom Gordon, Louie Bernier, Dan Herms - Enrico, David Shaw, Kathy Lewis, Scott Eneback, Jenny Juzwik, Fred Baker These people at a land grant university could join existing project and be eligible for funds to come to Fall meeting. Value: To attract other participants, we need to have something to make them want to come and join the group. What is that? Why do we want to continue to do this? Leveraging dollars as a group? An insect-vector pathogen focus is very relevant. Perhaps W-1187 can offer knowledge on how to interpret patterns on landscape through symbiosis, chemical interactions etc. Maybe try to broaden group with other disciplines? But don't want to become too thin. Perhaps we need to link to management. Another idea for enhancing value is to invite a natural resource economist or a social scientist person. To try and write a proposal with just the people in the room today, would not work. Try to re-engage people, ask them what would make it attractive to them. Stella gave an example of a group that has been around a long time. Their future is in trouble, they have a larger list of participants than us, yet have not been able to get a meeting together. The successful groups bring together people who traditionally do not get together. Value comes in doing a brain dump together, and providing an opportunity for students to come and meet colleagues and engage with others. Discussion on a W1187 generated book: Diana Six feels that the meeting has drifted too far away from bark beetle- fungal interactions. If a book was to be generated by the current group, what would be the focus? Fred suggests a synthesis paper on the role of pathogens in ecology. How pathogens are interacting with drought etc. Maybe update the Paine et al. book that came out of W1187 in 1992. But Diana says there are a number of synthesis papers on bark beetle fungi since that time. State Reports were presented by participants, with our usual interesting discussion. Annual Report All participants should send in 2 sentences for each objective they are working within. Also send an Impact statement and publications. Send to Fred Baker and he will compile for annual report. Provide reports to Fred for period Oct 2006 - Dec 2007. Send to Fred by April 20, 2008. (fred.baker@usu.edu) Need to update Impact statements from 2005. Fred will take a stab at this and send to group before submitting. Meeting adjourned at 1810. Compiled by Barbara Bentz Edited by Fred Baker

Group members have gained an understanding of the taxonomy and role of fungal associates of the major conifer-killing bark beetles in North America. These roles vary with host, insect and fungus, and include a var in their affects on larval health and development. Efforts continue to characterize the effects of bark beetle - pathogen systems on forest structure and on fuel characteristics to provide managers with the ability to predict future consequences of infestations and alter forest management to minimize negative impacts. We continue to expand our understanding of defense mechanisms involved in the strengthening of resistance in pathogen-induced trees. This work is leading to selection of tree genotypes that are more resistant to pathogen and insect attack. Isolation and characterization of signaling molecules involved in SIR will allow for the potential development of chemicals to induce resistance in trees in the absence of a fungal infection.

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