History of ASA
Asian Society of Arachnology
The Asian Society of Arachnology was founded in 2012 at a meeting in Laos. Since then, members have met regularly, communicated via various groups like Facebook and WeChat, and hosted a website. What was still missing was a logo.
After a competition in 2020, a logo was selected by the ASA Council, the past and present presidents and co-founders out of various proposals. Here is a short story, about how the logo was designed.
A spider should indicate at the first sight what kind of Society it is. Liphistius is an iconic spider genus, occurring exclusively in Asia and representing the oldest known extant spider lineage. The arrangement of the letters covers roughly the shape of Asia. The “S” standing for SOCIETY links the two “A”s, stressing the importance of the connection and communication between members. The last “A” for ARACHNOLOGY is the largest letter since this is the topic that unites us all. Moreover, it is situated in the tropics where the largest arachno-diversity exists.
4th ASA President: Prof Zhang Zhisheng
President's Message
The Asian Society of Arachnology (ASA) has crossed a new milestone after ten years since its establishment, thanks to the sustained support of researchers and enthusiasts from Asia and beyond.
It has been an arduous journey since the society was born in 2012. We have had seven conferences – Pakse (2012), Chiangmai (2014), Amravati (2015), Chongqinq (2017), Bangkok (2018), Kochi (2020), and Ninh Binh (2022). Through Facebook and a chat group in WeChat, we have been sharing photographs and videos, and alerting one and another of new papers and publications, and generally keeping in touch and keeping the ASA flame alive.
The ASA should continue to evolve, but in its own unique way. There is no need to imitate others blindly and become a clone of other arachnological societies elsewhere in the world. We are unique because our members come from widely diverse backgrounds, encompassing a vast geographic spread and have exceedingly varied interests – from nature photography, ecological studies, biological control to taxonomy, systematics and molecular phylogeny. We exist because we aim to cater for the diverse needs of our membership – from students, teachers, passionate hobbyists, to professional museum scientists and academic researchers interested in Asian spiders and other arachnids.
Our website can open a new door of opportunity to make a pivotal difference in growing the impact and standing of our society. The evolution of our website should be an interactive process involving our webmaster, the ASA Council and the members at large. We welcome your criticisms, encouragement and suggestions as we update and upgrade this website. Taking into account your feedback, we will proceed with easy-to-achieve “low-hanging fruits”, bearing in mind the time available of our webmaster and other content contributors. However, we hope that we can eventually include useful learning kits and reference aids, and other highly privileged contents that will be made available only to registered members.
We need your support to turn this website into a vibrant virtual market place for ideas and information, and an effervescent classroom to raise the enthusiasm and collective standards in arachnological studies in Asia.