Horst BATHON

Dr. Horst Rudolf BATHON was born in Offenbach/Main in Germany in 1942.

He was a researcher at BBA (Federal Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry) (now JKI – Julius Kühn-Institute, Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants) at the “Institute for Biological Control” in Darmstadt, Germany, from 1971 to 2007 and deputy director of this institute from 1991 to 2007.

His main research fields were mass production of phytophagous insects using semisynthetic diets; the importance of boundary ridges and field hedges for the invertebrate fauna including studies about potential pest insects; the application of entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN) against pest insects and their effects on non-target species, the latter being world wide the first attempt to study potential non-target effects of EPN on species level; invasive pests and their antagonists; legal aspects concerning the release of non indigenous beneficial species.

He was very successful in his research and published more than 160 scientific papers. He was always very engaged in nature protection and tried to reconcile between nature conservation and plant protection issues. He was an active member of a number of scientific and faunistic societies. He received national awards, including the “Karl-Escherich-Medaille” of the DGaaE (German Society of General and Applied Entomology) and a honorary award of the Land Hessen.

He has a very profound knowledge of insects and arachnids and always handled excellently innumerable inquiries from colleagues and private persons concerning diverse arthropod “problems”, which several times led to the first proof of a species.

He became implicated with IOBC through Working Group activities and was Council Member from 1997 to 2005 and Convenor of the Publication Commission from 1999 to 2009. The publication commission carries the final responsibility of all publishing activities in IOBC-WPRS. Under the responsibility of Horst Bathon the publication commission improved the homogenous appearance and quality of the Bulletins considerably by editing new “Instructions to the Authors” as well as “Instructions to Convenors”. From 1999 to 2009 111 Bulletins were published, many of these carefully re-edited by Horst Bathon. He also carefully prepared the pdf-version of all publications for access via the IOBC-WPRS website through the members. Moreover, Horst Bathon edited Profile, the newsletter of IOBC-WPRS.