WHEREAS, the 85thAnnual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists was held at Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri, 15-19 June 2005; and
WHEREAS, Journal Editor Barbara Blake requested a shorter Host Resolution BUT it ain’t gonna happen; and
WHEREAS, to commemorate Barbara’s request there is one more WHEREAS in this year’s Host Resolution than in the Host Resolution of the 4thAnnual Meeting; and
WHEREAS, the Resolutions Committee offered to fill the empty pages of the Journal of Mammalogy with next year’s Host Resolution thereby ending Past President Hugh Genoways’ continuous and persistent badgering that the Society was not publishing the 1600 pages authorized by the Board; and
WHEREAS, Sacha Vignieri found it more difficult for mammals to go over the mountains than “over the river and through the woods”; and
WHEREAS, Jeff Moore used auto correlation of non-hierarchically ordered slides and hierarchically structured data to show that mammals are not distributed hierarchically across habitats; and
WHEREAS, Trina Roberts used history, feeding strategy, human perturbations, and island size to determine whether by land or by sea explained current distribution of bats; and
WHEREAS, Jacob Goheen showed us the importance of saturation in mammal communities, which was important information for attendees expecting to be saturated by the humid, Missouri environment; and
WHEREAS, Kris Helgen found 10,000 new species of mammals; and
WHEREAS, the collapse of ENRON resulted in no electricity for the PowerPoint presentations of the Merriam and Grinnell winners, but the energy and humor of Jim Reichman and Norm Slade ballooned the bottom line and balanced the budget according to Arthur Anderson’s accounting; and
WHEREAS, Omer J. Reichman used reconstructionist history to explain that his aberrant behavior is the fault of his mentors; and
WHEREAS, Norm Slade educated the Society by teaching us that he isn’t a mammalogist; and
WHEREAS, President Guy Cameron demonstrated his ability to delegate by passing the blame for the absence of the Planning and Finance Committee Report from the Member’s Meeting Agenda; and
WHEREAS, last year Sue McLaren did such an excellent job as recording secretary that President Cameron saw no need to nominate her for reelection: déjà vu all over again; and
WHEREAS, Sydney Anderson was forced to sit and watch as Don Wilson’s Rules of Order used suspensions to create chaos from order; and
WHEREAS, we congratulate Bob Timm for presenting the Society’s budget in an Excel spreadsheet but question why he needed a calculator, slide rule, and abacus to sum the numbers at the bottom of the page; and
WHEREAS, Hugh Genoways through the Society’s silo site was a tall round concrete tower in Nebraska full of corn to bait traps for small mammals and that JSTOR was a package libation palace to visit after setting Shermans; and
WHEREAS, rumor has it that Terry Yates, who is chairman of the Board of Trustees and manages the Society’s money, paid his dues twice and then demanded a refund; isn’t he also on the Development Committee?; and
WHEREAS, Mike Gannon left no ASM member behind, even if they didn’t own a computer; and
WHEREAS, Chip Leslie and the Publications Committee, and Angie Fine and Allen Press in their report to the Board of Directors seem to think we are “mammalologists,” and pointed out that Barbara Blake and her associate editors handled 3002 or 90,000 individual manuscripts last year; and
WHEREAS, past presidents were black-listed; and
WHEREAS, the towels in the dorms were of a size appropriate for the “show me” state; and
WHEREAS, drains in the dorm bathrooms were not always the lowest point in the room; and
WHEREAS, some mammalogists were competitively excluded from the dorm cafeteria by red-shirted members of the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers; and
WHEREAS, coffee was in short supply at the cafeteria but at least it was weak; and
WHEREAS, the Local Committee used the Texas Tech model of holding a picnic in a parking lot; and
WHEREAS, the beer lines during the picnic at Bass Pro Sports were significantly longer than at all previous meetings combined, but the music made the wait worthwhile; and
WHEREAS, the white-necked red bat (Lasiurus leucocollaris) or the red-headed white bat (Lasiurus erythrocephalus) was our logo, but we didn’t have DNA sequences to employ the genetic species concept; and
WHEREAS, Robert Baker showed the Society that becoming an Honorary Member of ASM can be a “hair-straightening” experience; and
WHEREAS, George Feldhamer’s Mammal Beer-Tasting Committee met and voted Wicked Woodrat Ale, Labrador Lager, and Seadog Porter the top three beers of the meeting thereby confirming that two-thirds of a group in rapidly going to the dogs; and
WHEREAS, after a number of members were seen late on night at the Springfield Brewery, and then on their way back to the hotel and dormitories, their paths resembled correlated random walks with low r values; and
WHEREAS, Vice President Heaney, with his selection of the Capstone Speaker, noted avian ecologist Bob Ricklefs, has fulfilled the dream of the American Ornithologists’ Union of ASM going to the birds; or is that dinosaurs?; and
WHEREAS, may the Spilogale rest in peace; and
WHEREAS, the wonderful mammal fauna include gray squirrels in the trees, cottontails throughout the grass, and a very large grizzly bear in the plaza; and
WHEREAS, the weather was sunny, the Local Committee friendly, attentive, and well organized, facilities excellent, and presentations superb with PowerPoints submitted 24 hours before the talks without a hitch;
THEREFORE, be it resolved that the American Society of Mammalogists express heartfelt thanks to Tom Tomasi, Mark McKnight, and the entire Local Committee at Southwest Missouri State University for a wonderful, stimulating, and memorable meeting.