About the Society

About the Society

The need of a society exclusively devoted to tropical ecology was widely felt during the late 50s. The idea was discussed among leading ecologists (IV World Forestry, 1954; UNESCO symposium at Kandy, 1956; Bogor, 1958; and Pacific Science Congress, 1958). The International Society for Tropical Ecology (ISTE) was formally inaugurated in 1960 at the 47th Session of the Indian Science Congress Association at Bombay, with the object to foster and promote the cause of ecology in the tropics. Initially located at 10, Chatham Lines, Allahabad, the ISTE headquarters was shifted to the Department of Botany, Banaras Hindu University in 1962.

The tropical regions-harbouring most of the developing countries encompass varied environments, and support high biological diversity but often fragile ecosystems. Foreseeing the needs of these regions, from the very beginning ISTE stressed on better scientific communication and information sharing.

Activities

ISTE published its first journal as the Bulletin of the International Society for Tropical Ecology in 1960. The journal was renamed Tropical Ecology in 1961. From 1968 two issues of the journal are published each year. After the reorganisation of the Editorial Board in 1977, Tropical Ecology has become multilingual, accepting papers in four languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese), and publishing abstracts of each paper in these four languages. Till 2025, 66 volumes have been published, containing contributions from over 3000 authors from different countries.

To sustain information flow with the expanding ecological research activities in tropical and sub-tropical regions, the ISTE has been organising international symposia periodically. The First Symposium on Tropical Ecology was held at Varanasi in 1967; and subsequent symposia were held at New Delhi-India (1971), Caracas-Venezuela (1973), Lubumbashi-Zaire (1975), Panama-Canal Zone (1977), Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia (1979), Bhopal-India (1981), Lagos-Nigeria (1984), Varanasi-India (1987), Nainital-India (2007) and New Delhi-India (2014).