October 19, 2005, Lanham, Md. — The Governing Board of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) has elected nine new Fellows of the Society. The title of Fellow will be bestowed upon the following entomologists during the ESA Annual Meeting, December 15-18, 2005, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Dr. George E. Ball has served the entomological community with distinction since graduating from Cornell University in 1954. In that year, he joined the University of Alberta, becoming a full professor in 1965. He later served as the entomology department’s chair (1974-84) before retiring in 1992. Ball has been the Ph.D. advisor to 38 graduates during his career and two more after his retirement. He also has published 134 research papers and edited or co-edited five books.
A world expert on Mexican Carabidae, Ball has amassed the most important collection representing Mexican species from more than 40 years of field work. He has discovered important morphological characters that have led to stable classification of many tribes within the Carabidae. An Entomological Society of Canada (ESC) Gold Medal recipient (1980), he is an Honorary Member of ESC (1994) and the Entomological Society of Alberta (2000).
Ball received his M.S. in biology from the University of Alabama (1950) and his Ph.D. in entomology from Cornell (1954). In 1944 and 1945, Ball took a break from collegiate studies and served in the U.S. Marines in the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre, receiving the Purple Heart, a Presidential Unit Citation-Okinawan Campaign, and the Victory Medal.
Dr. Frank M. Davis is internationally recognized for his expertise in lepidopterous insects attacking crop plants, plant resistance to these insects, and insect rearing. During his 42 years with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service—34 of them as a research entomologist with the Corn Host Plant Resistance Research Unit at Mississippi State—he jointly released 12 germplasm lines and one maize population, received one patent, and published 163 scientific papers (124 of them in refereed journals).
Davis and colleagues identified the female southwestern corn borer pheromone and developed technology that uses the synthetic pheromone in monitoring adult populations throughout the pest’s range. He developed a highly reliable and efficient rearing system that is used throughout the Unites States and abroad for the southwestern corn borer, fall armyworm, and other lepidopteran species.
Before retiring in 1999, Davis was an adjunct professor with Mississippi State University since the late 1960s, where he also received his three degrees in entomology. In 2000, the Mississippi Senate passed a resolution recognizing Davis’ contributions to agriculture. Also, Davis is the vice mayor and a member of the Board of Aldermen for the City of Starkville, Mississippi.
Dr. Randy Gaugler is a pioneer in insect nematology. His work has led to the commercial development and practical application of engineered nematodes for insect control in the field. He was among the first to apply recombinant DNA methods for the improvement of entomopathogenic nematodes and his creative research has led to six patents and seven licenses.
Gaugler received his B.S. from North Dakota State University (1972), his M.S. from North Carolina State University (1974), and his Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Wisconsin (1978). His career began as a senior scientist with the New York State Museum (1979-82), before joining Rutgers University in 1982, where he has remained a professor for more than 20 years. He now holds the title Professor II (Distinguished Professor).
Gaugler has published more than 180 referred papers and three edited books. He is a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (1994), the Society of Nematologists (1997), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999). In addition, he was named a Fulbright Fellow earlier this year.
Considered the world’s preeminent expert on scarab beetle systematics, Dr. Henry F. Howden’s research on the taxonomy, systematics, evolution, biogeography, faunistic surveys, and natural history of Coleoptera has culminated in more than 170 scientific papers and book chapters, as well as collaborations with 43 coauthors. A Fellow of the Entomological Society of Canada (1985) and Honorary Member of the Instituto de Ecologia in Xalapa, Mexico (1998) and the Coleopterists Society (2003), Howden earned his M.S. (1949) from the University of Maryland, and in 1953, was the first student to earn a Ph.D. in entomology from North Carolina State University.
During his 42-year career, he spent nearly 30 years at Carleton University in Ontario, Canada, before retiring in 1995. Today he is a professor emeritus at Carleton and an honorary research associate at the Canadian Museum of Nature, also in Ontario. As a professor, Howden was the major supervisor for nine M.S., 10 Ph.D., and hundreds of undergraduate students whom he taught evolution, biogeography, and insect systematics. He also helped stimulate a generation of scientists by organizing and leading field courses to the Amazon in the 1970s, inspiring future entomologists and others such as wildlife artist Robert Bateman and natural history writer Adrian Forsyth.
Dr. Loke-Tuck Kok is an internationally acknowledged leader in the biocontrol of musk and plumeless thistle, noxious pasture weeds in the United States. He was the first to establish Trichosirocalus horridus (Panzer) and Rhinocyllus conicus Froelich weevils to combat these thistles in U.S. fields. He also was the first to demonstrate the importance of combining herbivory and plant competition for success. In addition, Kok has applied his expertise to control purple loosestrife using the root weevil Hylobius transversovittatus Goeze, spotted knapweed using the fly Urophora affinis Frfld, and the hemlock woody adelgid using the Canadian predaceous beetle Laricobius nigrinus.
Kok received his M.S. (1965) from the University of Malaya, Malaysia, and his Ph.D. in entomology (1971) from the University of Wisconsin. He joined Virginia Tech in 1972, and now serves as professor and head of the entomology department.
A member of Sigma Xi and Gamma Sigma Delta, Kok has graduated 14 M.S. and 12 Ph.D. students, and is currently advising or co-advising two M.S. and six Ph.D. students. He also has taught graduate courses—Biological Control of Arthropod Pests and Weeds, Arthropod Pest Management, Insect Ecology—and an upper-level undergraduate course, Insect Pest Management.
An honorary research fellow with CSIRO Entomology and the Queensland Museum, Dr. John F. Lawrence earned his Ph.D. in entomology (1965) from the University of California-Berkeley. He was a collections coordinator and assistant curator at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (1964-77), a research scientist with CSIRO’s Division of Entomology (1977-99, and curator of coleopteran at the Australian National Insect Collection (1977-99). He retired in 1999.
Lawrence’s earliest research—in the 1960s—focused on Ciidae, “little brown beetles” that appeared deficient in the systematic characters normally used in beetle classification. He tackled this group using an array of innovated character systems, including internal structures and larvae, morphometrics, host specificity, and a new technique at the time, cladistics. He quickly expanded his interest to tackle higher-level systematic problems, and by 1970, was considered a leading world authority on beetle systematics. He later cemented this position through massive cooperative projects to produce a manual of beetle larvae and a synopsis of beetle higher classification, although the main results were not published until later (1981, 1991, 1995). In 1999, he produced CD-ROM guides to beetle adults and larvae, which summarized his life’s work on this group of organisms.
Dr. Lubomir Masner has made significant contributions to Hymenopteran systematics, particularly parasitic Hymenoptera. His specialization is the superfamilies Proctotrupoidea, Platygastroidea, and Ceraphronoidea, a complex of nearly 10,000 described species of important biocontrol agents and vectors of human and animal disease. He is considered the world’s preeminent expert on these groups, with more than 90 peer-reviewed publications to his name.
Masner received his M.S. (1957) from Charles University, Czechoslovakia, and his Ph.D. (1962) in entomology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1964, he accepted a postdoctoral position with Agriculture Canada, and more than 30 years later, he retired to serve as honorary research associate with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. In addition to his research, he also was curator in the Hymenoptera section of the Canadian National Collection of Insects, and built that collection into a world-class resource on hymenoptera biodiversity.
Recipient of the Entomological Society of Canada’s Gold Medal (1999), Masner has been named an external research associate for the American Museum of Natural History, Florida State Collection of Arthropods, and Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He has been an external collaborator with the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Costa Rica, and a research fellow with CSIRO, New Zealand’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.
For 30 years, Dr. Larry P. Pedigo has been a national leader in integrated pest management. He has led the development and use of economic injury levels (EILs). His approach to establishing them has been the primary method used in the United States and abroad. Many major books and web sites on pest management use his equation, EIL=C/VDIK.
In addition to his IPM expertise, Pedigo was an early leader in sampling methodologies for agricultural pests. A major reference is the Handbook of Sampling Methods for Arthropods in Agriculture (1994), which he and a former student edited. He has published more than 160 refereed papers.
Pedigo earned his M.S. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967) in entomology from Purdue University. In 1967, he became an assistant professor at Iowa State University, where he retired in 2001 as a university professor. At the university, Pedigo founded and directed a secondary major in pest management, and designed and taught six new courses in entomology, pest management, and zoology. He has taught more than 2,000 undergraduates in Fundamentals of Entomology and Pest Management, and wrote the textbook and coauthored the laboratory manual for the course.
ramaswamyDr. Sonny B. Ramaswamy received his M.S. in entomology from the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bangalore, India (1976) and his Ph.D. in entomology from Rutgers University (1980). He was a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University (1979-82); an assistant, associate, and full professor at Mississippi State University (1982-97); and professor, university distinguished professor and head of the Kansas State University (KSU), Department of Entomology (1997-2004). At KSU, he administers a department of approximately 20 regular, 15 adjunct, and 10 ancillary faculty.
Ramaswamy directs an active personal research program in the integrative reproductive biology of insects, encompassing endocrine and ovarian physiology, chemical ecology, pheromones and sexual behavior and their regulation by hormones, structure and function of sensory receptors as related to host finding and mating in insects, and modification of insect behavior using natural products. He has published more than 100 journal papers, and in recent years, has published on average more than five refereed papers annually.
A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ramaswamy has taught courses in general entomology, insect physiology, and even public speaking. He also initiated and manages the Insect Physiology Listserve. In education and outreach, he was instrumental in the creation of and fund-raising for the KSU Butterfly Conservatory and Insect Zoo.
Founded in 1889, ESA is a non-profit organization committed to serving the scientific and professional needs of more than 5,700 entomologists and individuals in related disciplines. ESA's membership includes representatives from educational institutions, government, health agencies, and private industry.
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