The Association was formed in 1986 in Copenhagen when Dr Jorgen Kirkegaard, Convenor of the Second International Polychaete Conference, proposed the idea and developed a Constitution which was adopted at the meeting. Basically the function of the Association was to select a venue for the following Conference and to appoint a person to be the Convenor. Representatives from countries or country blocks comprised an IPA Council. Their role was to ensure that the Organising Committee to host the next Conference was made aware of all the people in that country or countries who were working on polychaetes. No fees were to be paid and all people who had enrolled at the Conference became members of the Association. The second President was Dr David George who was elected during the Third International Conference at Long Beach and he revised the Constitution to make it simpler. I replaced David after the fourth Conference in France and one of the things which I did was to develop a series of procedures as to how to select the next venue for the meeting and to ensure that we had a number of proposals to consider. This system was used in China to select the venue for the sixth meeting to be held in Brazil in 1998.
While some members of the Council have wanted the Association to become more active in promoting polychaete research, there has been little coordinated discussion as to how this could be achieved. Discussions have centred around a possible Polychaete journal and assistance on taxonomic questions. One action that was decided in China was that we would form a Nomenclatural Sub Committee which consists of myself, Kristian Fauchald, Alex Muir and Tom Miura, and we have prepared our first submission to the International Commission in response to their request for an opinion on a particular case [ Dodecaceria concharum neotype] .
This listing kindly provided by Andrew Mackie, November 1999.
Arvanitidis, Christos (Greece/Turkey) aravanitidis@imbc.gr
Ben-Eliahu, Nechama (Israel) nbenelia@cc.huji.ac.il
Bhaud, Michel (France) mbhaud@arago.obs-banyuls.fr
Byers, Sheila (Canada) scbyers@intouch.bc.ca
(Replacement for Pocklington)
Dauer, Dan (USA) ddauer@odu.edu
(Replacement for Blake)
Eibye-Jacobsen, Danny (Denmark) dejacobsen@zmuc.ku.dk
( Replacement for Pleijel)
Britayev, Temir (Russia) temir@invert.sevin.msk.ru
Carrasco, Franklin (Chile) fcarrasc@buho.dpi.udec.cl
Gambi, Cristina (Italy) gambimc@alpha.szn.it
Hilbig, Brigitte (Germany) fb7a070@rrz-cip-1.rrz.uni-hamburg.de
(Replacement for Pfannensteil)
Hutchings, Pat (Australia) path@austmus.gov.au
Lana, Paulo (Brazil) lana@aica.cem.ufpr.br
McHugh, Damhnait (USA) dmmchugh@mail.colgate.edu
(Replacement for Kudenov)
Miura, Tomoyuki (Japan) miura@zero.fish.kagoshima-u.ac.jp
Qian, Pei-Yuan (China) boqianpy@usthk.ust.hk
Sarda, Raphael (Spain) sarda@ceab.csic.es
Solis-Weis, Vivianne (Mexico) solisw@mar.icmyl.unam.mx
Westheide, Wilfried (Germany) westheide@cipfb5.biologie.uni-osnabrueck.de
There are a couple of regions of the world that are not represented. The advisory council would very much like to have a member to represent each of the following regions: Africa, India Region