BR. J. ENT. NAT. HIST., 7: 1994 



Professor Hering memorial research fund 



The committee agreed to support two applications to the Hering Fund for 1994, 

 both involving studies of Tephritidae. Dr Alan Gange (Royal Holloway College, 

 London) was granted the sum of £325 towards the costs of a project on the role of 

 nitrogen in the nutrition of the thistle stem gall fly (Urophora cardui), an insect 

 associated with Cirsium arvense. This study will assess the importance of nitrogen 

 to the fly when nitrogen levels in galls on the thistle are manipulated. 



Michael Bonsall (Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) was 

 awarded £175 for work on parasitoid complexes of thistle Tephritidae. His study will 

 include a critical review of the literature on tephritids and their associated parasitoids 

 and the construction of a quantitative food web describing parasitoid associations. 

 Mr BonsalPs project will require the collection of flowerheads and galls from various 

 sites in the UK and the work will involve identification of the emerging insects. 



I have received reports on the results of work from three of the projects supported 

 by the Hering Fund last year. In his study of aspects of the behavioural ecology of 

 members of the gracillariid genus Phyllonorycter, Dr Vincas Buda (Institute of 

 Ecology, Vilnius, Lithuania) found, amongst other things, that gravid females of the 

 lepidopteran leaf miner P. ulmifoliella seem able to distinguish between the leaf of 

 a hostplant with an egg already laid by a conspecific female and a leaf without an egg. 



A grant to Dr Yuan Decheng (Academia Sinica, Beijing) enabled him to undertake 

 collecting trips to the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi and to Mount Longqi in Fujian. 

 Dr Yuan collected about 300 specimens of Gracillariidae, including material he is 

 incorporating into a revision of the genus Acrocercops. 



David Agassiz used his award for fieldwork in mapping the spread of Phyllonorycter 

 platani in south-eastern Britain. This exciting work is part of a programme of research 

 examining the establishment and rate of spread of Lepidoptera that have invaded 

 Britain during the century. 



The microscope bequeathed to the Hering Fund by Edward Pelham-Clinton, 10th 

 Duke of Newcastle, continues to be lent to Dr Margaret Redfern-Cameron for her 

 work on insects associated with thistles. 



M. J. Scoble 



LIBRARIAN'S REPORT 



The theme of this year's report is back to normal at last. I spent the early part 

 of the year compiling a list of possible book purchases to make up for the fact that 

 no new books were purchased while the library was in store. This list was then discussed 

 at a library committee meeting held in June from which a series of recommendations 

 emerged which amounted to a potential expenditure of about £1350; so far 

 approximately 70% of these have been purchased. Other subjects considered at this 

 meeting were: whether the society should purchase new books in future from a single 

 source, thus attracting a negotiated purchase discount; advice on subject classifications 

 of certain books and future developments of the library as a service to members. 



Progress has continued throughout the year on confirming that books were identified 

 correctly against the accession number given to them in the library database, during 

 the stocktake performed by volunteers in 1992. Further development of this database 

 in terms of report formats, mail-merge letters, relational look-ups, search strategies 

 security functions and user instructions has continued concurrently. In this context 

 the next step should be for the library computer committee to re-form to develop 

 a specification for the purchase of a computer for use in the library. 



