Presented by the President, Dr David Reid, at the Annual General Meeting,
at the National Museum and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff, on 27 February,
1999
First
of all I would like to thank Ian Killeen very much indeed for arranging
this meeting on Biogeography and Distribution of European Land and Freshwater
Molluscs, which provides us with the opportunity for our AGM. Also my
thanks to the National Museum and Galleries of Wales for providing us
with this excellent venue.
Membership
of The Society
At
the end of 1998 the membership of The Society stood at 306, of which
10 were new members, while 3 had resigned, 1 was deceased and 8 had
lapsed. We cannot ignore this continuing small decline in our membership,
that has fallen by almost 6% since 1995. An important initiative for
publicising The Society among students has been our annual Young Malacologists'
Forum. I must urge all of you to encourage new members, especially among
students and young malacologists, who are the future of our discipline.
Do remember that student membership is a very reasonable £22.
Meetings
The
Society has organized three meetings over the past 12 months. In addition,
many members were involved in the World Congress of Malacology, held
from 25 to 30 July, in Washington, D.C.
The
105th AGM was combined with a meeting on 'Feeding and Foraging Strategies
in Molluscs', held on 25 March at the Ecology Centre of the University
of Sunderland, and organized by Mark Davies. Six speakers presented
talks on a wide range of molluscs, from slugs to cephalopods, and the
role of molluscan predators and grazers in oceanic, intertidal, terrestrial
and freshwater environments.
The
Young Malacologists' Forum has become an annual event, and was once
again arranged by Alex Ball at the Natural History Museum in London.
This year's Forum took place on 24 September, and attracted 14 speakers
from seven countries. The quality of the talks and posters this year
was most impressive, and deserved a larger audience. This is a very
worthwhile event, providing an insight into the diverse range of research
topics being pursued by the new generation of malacologists. It is also
a chance for students to meet specialists in other fields, and an opportunity
for them to glimpse the facilities of the collections and library that
are available at the Museum. To encourage informal discussion wine and
snacks were provided after the meeting. Alex has provided a report on
this highly successful meeting in issue number 32 of the Bulletin.
Next year's Forum will be held on 18 November.
Our
third event was an evening meeting on the topic of 'Predatory Molluscs',
jointly hosted by the Linnean Society of London, and held in their rooms
at Burlington House on 21 January. This was arranged by Hugh Jones,
assisted by Elizabeth Platts. A large audience heard talks by four speakers,
and abstracts are printed in issue 32 of the Bulletin. The evening
closed with a wine reception in the library, very kindly provided by
the Linnean Society.
I would
like to thank all those who organized or assisted with arrangements
for these three successful meetings.
The
highlight of our programme during the coming year will be the three-day
meeting 'Biology and Evolution of the Bivalvia', to be held in Cambridge
from 14 to 17 September. This has already attracted an international
group of eminent participants, and the proceedings will be published
as a volume to rank alongside that from our last major international
meeting, the 1993 centenary of The Society.
Publications
The
Journal of Molluscan Studies continues to maintain its place
as one of the foremost malacological periodicals, thanks to the expert
editorship of John Taylor. The four parts of volume 64 comprised 501
pages and 51 papers. The provenance of the papers published (address
country of first author) remains dominantly European, with 46% from
continental western Europe, 20% from the United Kingdom and Ireland,
followed by 6% each from USA and Canada, South Africa and South America,
and a further 16% from the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, Japan,
SE Asia, Australia, Africa, India,
Oman
and Israel. During 1998, 91 papers were submitted for publication and
around 40% of these were rejected for various reasons. The Editor would
like to express his thanks for the continued support and efforts of
the Associate Editors-David Brown, Elizabeth Harper, Peter Mordan, Elizabeth
Platts and David Reid.
The
Society's Bulletin continues to be excellently produced by Stuart
Bailey, and appears in February and August. I thank both John Taylor
and Stuart Bailey for their hard work on The Society's publications,
and all who have contributed to them, whether as authors or referees.
I would
remind you that The Society's World Wide Web site is an important source
of information about The Society, its meetings and its publications,
and includes a complete reproduction of the latest issue of the Bulletin
and links to other malacological sites. I thank Mark Davies for his
hard work in producing and managing our web site. The site has attracted
no less than 3000 hits during the past year.
The
Society's Awards
The
Society makes three Awards each year: the Annual Award for an initial
contribution to malacology, the Sir Charles Maurice Yonge Award for
an outstanding paper on bivalves published in the Journal, and the Centenary
Research Grants for malacological research. The announcements of the
winners of the 1998 Awards will be made later in the proceedings. I
would ask you all please to publicize our Awards, especially the Annual
Award and the Research Grants, which are aimed particularly at students.
The
Officers and Council
Finally,
on behalf of the whole Society I would like to express my warmest thanks
to all those Officers and Members of the Council who have assisted with
the smooth running of The Society over the past year, especially to
those Council Members who are retiring: Vice-President Ian Killeen,
and Ordinary Members Robert Cameron and Mark Davies. In particular,
I thank those long-serving Officers of The Society, our Treasurer Dai
Roberts and Secretary Georges Dussart, for all their continuing hard
work and dedication.
Dr
David G. Reid
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