Council

Meetings

The Executive met 9 times during the year.

Annual Symposium

A symposium entitled 'Biology in the wet-dry tropics: still wet behind the ears' was held at the Northern Territory University in Darwin in July 1998. The one day symposium was held in conjunction with the Conasta conference in Darwin in an attempt to encourage extra participation. This strategy had limited success. Nonetheless the symposium was very successful and we thank Michael Vardon and Richard Noske for arranging it. Papers from the symposium were published in August 1999 in the Australian Biologist symposium issue.

Journal

Again we have to express our disppoint-ment at the poor level of support provided for the Scientific and Executive editors of the Australian Biologist by the members of the Publications Committee and the Area Representatives. We agreed to limit issues to two a year aimed at May and November, the May issue being the symposium issue. Two newsletters would be produced in the intervening periods. The first newsletter has appeared and the second is scheduled for later in the year. The Symposium issue has been a bit late in appearance ( a common problem with multi-authored publications!). We thank Graham Andrews for a sterling job in producing the newsletter and the journal. We wish the incoming Scientific Editor well and hope that he will be able to muster up more support for the journal than has been forthcoming of late.

Membership

Since August 1998, we have gained 26 new members including 2 Fellows, 15 Members, 6 Associate Members and 2 Student Members.

Currently we have 521 members on our database (compared with 510 last year) but of these an alarming number (136) have still to pay their current dues. Reminder notices are due to be sent out soon. There are in addition 24 library subscriptions, of which 3 are in arrears. During the year, we have removed from our database 24 persons who were 2 years in arrears.

Thus we have at present 384 fully paid up members which contrasts with 443 financial members at the same time last year. Of these, there are 4 Honorary Fellows (1.1%), 71 Fellows (18.4%), 281 Members (73.2%), 19 Associate Members (5.0%) and 9 Student Members (2.4%).

While it is hoped that many of the overdue subscriptions will be forthcoming, it is likely that the numbers of financial members will continue to fall unless the recent strategies of the Executive Committee begin to take effect. In this regard, several thousand specific invitations to join the AIB have been sent out to all Australian university biology-type departments and to all biology teachers in Australian secondary schools. This mail-out has been followed up recently by a repeat invitation which more specifically targets those biologists who might be attracted by the recently introduced AMAIBiol post-nominal. The Committee hopes that this massive effort will yield a significant increase in the numbers of applicants for membership.

The Registrar wishes to thank the members of the Credential Committee for their help throughout the year in assessing membership applications and particularly the AIB Secretary, Margaret Davies, for her invaluable help with our membership drive.

New Fellows are:

Prof John J. Finlay-Jones, Department of Microbiology, Flinders University of South Australia.
Prof Marilyn B. Renfree, Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne.
Prof Craig Atkins, Department of Botany, University of Western Australia.

Biology Olympiads

The AIB has responsibility for raising the funds to provide bursaries to the team members for the Biology Olympiads and also to maintain the register of interested people to help in team training. The President continued to approach Societies in Australia and the responses allowed funding of four bursaries to the 1999 team which performed outstandingly. The Executive believes this to be a very worthwhile exercise and would welcome assistance from the membership in fundraising.

The future

Despite our best efforts, the last year has no highs and a few lows. It is time to hand on to others with fresh ideas. We wish the incoming Executive well and I personally wish the incoming Secretary all the very best - may her successes be many and varied.