39th Annual General Meeting
Parasitism, Immunity & Environment (formerly Parasitology) Section
Canadian Society of Zoologists
May 10, 2012
Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick

Minutes

Present:       

Lucy Lee (Chair), Spencer Greenwood (Vice-chair), members and guests of the Parasitism, Immunity & Environment (PIE) section of CSZ

1.0   Approval of agenda

Motion: That the agenda be approved (Spencer Greenwood/John Webster). Motion carried.

2.0   Introductory comments

Lucy Lee welcomed everyone to the Annual General Meeting and introduced guests.
Inaugural PIE meeting chaired by incoming Chair, Spencer Greenwood (UPEI)

3.0   Approval of minutes from the 38th Annual General Meeting (50th CSZ Meeting, May 19, 2011 at University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON)

Motion: That the minutes of the 2011 AGM be approved. (Brian Dixon/Dan McLaughlin). Motion carried.

4.0   Business arising from previous minutes

At the May 19/2011 meeting in Ottawa, the motion (Lee/Shostak) to change the name of the PAR Section to Parasitism, Immunity & Environment (PIE) was carried. At the same meeting, a second motion was made (Shostak/Marcogliese), “that the incoming Chair of the Section (Lucy Lee) strike an ad hoc committee to implement the name change of the Section, to explore the implications of such a name change, and to report back to the members of the Section.” The ad hoc committee struck consisted of Brian Dixon, Spencer Greenwood and Lucy Lee who will work to draft/update the PIE section constitution as it moves forward from the former Parasitology section.

It was agreed that the outgoing Chair act as Secretary for the section and that this position be added to the Executive of the Section (Mick/Dan)

The Executive for 2012-13 consists of

Chair: Dr. Spencer Greenwood (sgreenwood@upei.ca ), U. of Prince Edward Island
Vice-Chair: Dr. Brian Dixon (bdixon@uwaterloo.ca ), University of Waterloo
Secretary & Past Chair: Dr. Lucy Lee (llee@wlu.ca ), Wilfrid Laurier University

5.0   Elections

Lucy Lee announced a call for nominations for Vice-chair for 2012-13; this person would become Chair in 2013-14. She announced that the main duty of the Vice-Chair is as follows:

The Vice-Chair for 2011-12 was Dr. Spencer Greenwood who is now the 2012-13 Chair.  Lucy Lee thanked the past Chair, Dr. Todd Smith (Acadia U) for his service to the Section and assistance provided over the past year. The main duties for the Chair were listed in the Minutes of the May 19, 2011, PAR 38th meeting

Todd Smith/Dan Barreda nominated Brian Dixon (U Waterloo) for the Vice-Chair for 2012-13 and he was appointed as such by unanimous vote.

6.0   Reports

6.1   News from CSZ Council meeting (May 7, 2012) & CSZ AGM (May 9, 2012)

President Louise Mulligan solicited nominations for naming of the PDF award.
The CJZ is proposing to support a symposium with CSP from which papers will be published in a special issue of CJZ.
Section chairs for next year will be Jeff Richards for CPB and Tamara Franz Odendaal for CMD. EEE has yet to nominate a chair, while for PIE, its Spencer Greenwood.
Local Organising Committee: There were about 300 registrants for this meeting. They received many compliments for the quality of food.  The number of student participants was high again this year, and 6 to 8 presenters (students and PIs) were interviewed by the local media.

CSZ 2013 in Guelph: Todd Gillis is the Chair of the Local Organising Committee, and he gave a short presentation at the Council meeting on plans so far for the 2013 meeting. The LOC consists additional to Todd, Pat Wright, Nick Bernier, Elizabeth Boulding, Glenn Van Der Kraak, Doug Fudge, Matt Vicaryous, Fred Lebarge and Amy Newman (Postdoc). Theme will be “Applying Zoology towards a better planet” and speakers lined up include Paul Hebert (Guelph), Jacqueline Litzgus (Laurentian), Goran Nilsson (Oslo), Bridget Stuchbury (York). ZET lecture guest will be Sheila Patek (U Mass) The meeting will be held from May 13 to 17, 2013 in Guelph, mostly in the new Integrative Biology Building.  Accommodation at residences is very reasonable at $44 per night, and several events have been planned including the classic East/West hockey game. Banquet is to be held off campus but not yet confirmed.

Future meetings: The 2014 meeting will be a joint meeting with the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) in Montreal during the last week of May.  The 2015 meeting is scheduled to be held at the University of Calgary. The 2016 meeting was proposed by Brent Sinclair to be hosted at Univ. of Western Ontario.

6.2   Finances

The Section finances stand at $2393 as of December 31, 2012.

6.3   Recognition Committee

The Recognition Committee consists of the past 3 Wardle winners and this year consisted of Dan McLaughlin, Dave Marcogliese and Andre Buret, and is chaired by the Vice Chair. This Committee was unanimous in its support of Al Shostak’s nomination for the RA Wardle Award. 

This year’s committee consisting of Dave Marcogliese, Dan McLaughlin and Al Shostak, will revise the terms of the Wardle award to fit with the new PIE mandate (motioned by Al, seconded by Spencer - carried).  

6.4   Student awards

Of the 16 papers presented in the 3 PIE sessions, 11 were given by students. All were participants for the Murray Fallis Prize for best oral presentation in PIE, along with one additional student who presented at the EEE joint session on Tuesday, thus 12 students competed for the Fallis award. This year’s winner was Laura Ferguson from Acadia University for her presentation on “Fecundity reduction in the second gonotrophic cycle of the mosquito, Culex pipiens, infected with the apicomplexan blood parasite, Hepatozoon sipedon”

7.0   Business

7.1   Symposium 2012

The PIE  symposia was a “room-packed” success, and was co-hosted by Spencer Greenwood and Todd Smith. The title of the symposium was “Parasitism, Immunity and the Aquatic Environment”, and featured Drs. Richard Cawthorn (U. of Prince Edward Island ), Mark Fast (University of PEI) and John Lumsden (University of Guelph). 

There were THREE sessions of presented papers, grouped under three themes: 1) Immunology & responses to Parasites in Aquatic Organisms, 2) Microparasites, and 3) Macroparasites.

The Wardle award lecture was introduced by Dr David Marcogliese, who introduced the 2012 winner, Dr. Al Shostak, who “enchanted” us with his talk:  Enchanted by the “charismatic microfauna”: an exploration of relationships between the environment, parasites and their invertebrate hosts.   

7.2   Symposium 2013

"Parasitism-Immunity-Environment Interactions: Sweet as Cherry PIE", organized by Brian Dixon, with speakers Christopher Kyle, Janet Koprivnikar and Matthew Rise.

7.3   State of the Parasitology Section (presented by Lucy Lee)

We are excited to see that the revamped session is attracting new members and that we are engaging not only new members but also past members. The membership in the Section is growing as noted by the increased attendance in our 3 sessions as well as to our annual meeting.

7.4   Constitutional changes

 A sub-committee consisting of Lucy Lee, Spencer Greenwood and Brian Dixon will work to draft/update the PIE section constitution as it moves forward from the former Parasitology section. They are tasked to derive a new set of bylaws.

7.5   Items of new business

The 87th American Society of Parasitologists (ASP) meeting is to be held in Virginia in June 13-16, 2012, and the 88th will be hosted in Quebec in June 26-29 2013
Dan Barreda spoke at length about student engagement and that a student representative should be added to the organization of the PIE symposia

8.0   Adjournment

Motion: That the meeting be adjourned.

Moved: Brian, seconded by Al.