STUDIES ON HUMAN BEINGS

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the spirit of the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

Human subjects have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the subject (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a subject who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of subjects is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.

FORUM

In the section called Forum, Behavioral Ecology publishes commentary on recent issues, topics, and methodologies of interest to the broad readership of the journal. Forum articles are generally short and may use any format appropriate to the material, though the reference format is as described below for regular manuscripts. The Forum is not intended for criticism or praise of individual published papers, or for exchanges of correspondence between authors and critics. However, commentary on an issue of broad significance that can be highlighted by reference to a single paper, or commentary on several related articles, published in Behavioral Ecology or elsewhere, is welcome. Authors should consult a recent issue of the journal. Submission and refereeing procedures follow those for other manuscripts.

ONLINE SUBMISSION

Behavioral Ecology processes all manuscripts through its online submission system located at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/beheco. New authors should create their own account when they first log on. Authors who already have an account should log in using their previous account ID and password in order to submit a new manuscript. Detailed instructions for using the site and preparing manuscripts are available on the site or can be found here. If you have questions about this system or the procedures for submitting manuscripts, please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Mark Elgar, Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, E-mail: Mark Elgar.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The online system will require you to submit at least two files: one (the "Complete Anonymous Text") will contain a version of your manuscript that is suitable for review, and the other will contain the full cover page and acknowledgments. Once your submission is complete, the files will be available for the editorial office to examine. If everything is in order, the Editor-in-Chief will assign the manuscript to an Editor for handling. The Editor will request reviews and make the decision on your manuscript. Please feel free to note any possible conflicts of interest with any of the Editors or with possible reviewers in the spaces provided during the submission process.

Complete Anonymous Text

You will be asked to submit a file containing the text of your manuscript. Do not include the authors' names on the title/abstract page or in headers of the text file. On the Web site, you will be asked to identify the "designation" of this file and whether or not it is for review. The manuscript text file should be denoted as "Complete Anonymous Text" and "yes" for review.

The file containing the Complete Anonymous Text should be formatted to fit on 8.5" x 11" (22 cm x 28 cm) paper (A4 is also acceptable), with margins on all four sides of at least 1.25" (30 mm). Double-space throughout and assemble the sections as follows:

title and abstract
text
references
figure legends
tables and table legends
figures

Number the pages consecutively. Several file formats are acceptable; please consult instructions at the Web site for details. Authors must upload figures as separate files using instructions available at the Web site.

Title/abstract

The first page should include a title (concise but informative), a short title for use in the running header, and the abstract. The abstract should be a single paragraph of not more than 250 words that is complete without reference to the text. Do not use acronyms or complex abbreviations. Key words for indexing should be listed at the end of the abstract. (In addition to the abstract, a Lay Summary is required with the final version of the manuscript. Authors should carefully read the full instructions regarding Lay Summaries given below.)

Text

Beginning on a separate page, the text should be clear, readable, and concise. The first-person active voice is preferable to the impersonal passive voice. Use line numbers. Do not use footnotes. American spelling should be used throughout, except in quotations and references. Reserve the use of underlining and italics for scientific species names and the symbols for variables and constants. The methods section should be detailed enough to allow referees to answer some or all of the following questions, as appropriate: (1) is the study experimental or observational? (2) are the methods described in sufficient detail so that the study can be replicated? (3) does the experimental design exclude the possibility of observer and experimenter bias (e.g., by double blind protocol)? (4) does the experimental procedure potentially produce artifacts? (5) are appropriate conclusions drawn from non-significant results and/or are confidence intervals for effect sizes presented when results are non-significant?

References

As of issue 17(4), Behavioral Ecology follows the name-year citation style from Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (7th ed.) for style.

All works included in the reference section should be referred to in the text. Citations should be typed alphabetically on a separate sheet, double-spaced and unnumbered. They should be referred to in the text by the name(s) of the first author(s) and subsequent authors as necessary, followed by the year of publication in parentheses: (Able, Baker, and Cabbott 2000) or Able, Baker, and Durmot (2000). The order for references within parentheses in the text should be chronological and then alphabetical. For works by the exact same author(s) in the same year, append a lowercase a, b, c, etc. to the year of publication. If the works differ slightly in names, provide enough surnames to distinguish the one group from the other. The reference list should conform to the following styles:

Journal article
Author AB, Author CD, Author EF. 2001a. Title of article. J Hered. 60:128-132.

Paper in a conference proceedings
Author AB, editor. 2001b. Article title. Name of conference; YYYY MMM DD-DD; location. City, State or Country of publication: Publisher's name. p. 137-180.

Book
Author GH, Author IJ. 1999a. Title of book. City, State or Country of publication: Publisher's name.

Chapter in a book
Author GH, Author IJ. 1999b. Title of a chapter: a subtitle. In: Able MN, Baker OP, editors. Title of book. 2nd ed. City, State or Country of publication: Publisher's name. p. 200-235.

Thesis or dissertation
Author MN. 2002. Title [dissertation]. Location of university: Name of university; 68 p.

Only published material or material accepted for publication should be listed in the references; personal communications, unpublished data, manuscripts in preparation, etc., should be incorporated in the text in parentheses with the initials surname of the source, e.g., (OP Able, personal communication).

Figure legends

Figure legends should be typed together on a separate sheet within the manuscript. All figures must be referred to in the text and should be accompanied by a legend that incorporates any necessary explanatory material. Figure legends should be as concise as possible.

Tables

Tables should be typed double-spaced, each on a separate page, and numbered using Arabic numerals; do not use vertical rules and use only those horizontal rules absolutely necessary for clarity. Table titles should be concise. Explanatory material, notes on measurements, and other general information that applies to the whole table should be included as the first, unnumbered footnote and not in the table title. Consult a recent issue for the journal's table style.

Figures

Number all line drawings, photographs, or diagrams consecutively with Arabic numerals. Figure legends should be typed together on a separate sheet. All figures should fit comfortably into one of the following sizes: 85 mm, 129 mm or 177 mm wide by up to 238 mm deep. Although they may be prepared and submitted larger than final size, identifying lettering should be sized so its smallest elements will be readable when reduced. For the most attractive final result, authors should plan for the smallest possible printed size compatible with clarity.

Drawings and graphs. All figures should be submitted in both electronic format and as high-quality laser prints. Place labels parallel to the axes. Use italic type only to identify variables, constants, and scientific names of species. Typewritten and hand-lettered charts and graphs will not be accepted. Figures considered unsuitable for publication because of poor letter quality, broken type, etc., will be returned to the author for correction. Composite figures should be submitted in their final, combined form, with all parts labeled appropriately. All figures, drawings, and graphs should be prepared with the intent of carrying the most information and the least extraneous detail. The editors encourage authors to consult the series of books by E. Tufte as guides in preparation of figures, drawings, and graphs. Line drawings must have a resolution of at least 1200 dots per inch at their final size.

Black-and-white photographs. To reproduce well, photographs should be sharp, with good contrast between light and dark areas. Photographs making up a composite illustration should be mounted on a lightweight mounting board in the desired configuration. Do not leave any space between the individual prints making up a composite illustration. The printer will insert a fine line to separate the images. These photographs must have a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch at their final size.

Color figures. Authors will be charged $600 for reproduction of each color figure in their article. Color figures must have a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch at their final size.

Orders from the UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge. Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number.

For useful information on preparing figures, visit Sheridan where you can test whether your figures are suitable for production by using the preflight tool.

Cover page and acknowledgments

In a separate file, please submit a full cover page with the title and the authors' names and affiliations followed by a page with the full acknowledgments. On the Web site, please designate this file as "Cover and Acknowledgments" and answer "no" when asked if it is for review.

Cover page
The cover page should include the title (concise but informative); the full names of all authors (first and last) as they wish them to appear in print; the authors' institutional affiliations; the name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address of the author responsible for receiving proofs, correspondence, and reprint requests; and the current address of any author(s) whose institutional affiliation has changed since the work reported was performed.

Authors should include a short title for use in the running titles.

Acknowledgments
On a separate page list any acknowledgments, sources of support, grants, disclaimers, etc.

COVER ILLUSTRATION SUBMISSIONS

An illustration is featured on the cover of each issue, the cost of which is borne by the journal. Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality photographs for possible use as a cover illustration. Photos must be submitted in color. Provide a brief caption and include a credit for the photographer or artist.

ELECTRONIC HANDLING OF ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTS

Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, authors will be provided with instructions on preparing a file to be uploaded on the Web site and then made accessible to the publisher. This file will contain the full, non-anonymous text (including cover page and acknowledgments). A variety of formats are possible, but authors should consult the detailed instructions at the Web site.

The final copy of the manuscript file should be prepared accurately, consistently, and simply, avoiding the use of special fonts or elaborate formatting for aesthetics. Paragraphs should be formatted the same way throughout. The lowercase "ell" (l) and the numeral one (1), and the capital "oh" (O) and the numeral zero (0), should be used correctly, not interchangeably; the lowercase "oh" should not be used as a subscript zero. Greek symbols, diacritical marks, italics, superscripts, and subscripts should be typed in the electronic file using software features as much as possible. When a special character cannot be typed in the file, it should be represented by an available character that is not otherwise used, and authors should provide a translation key to those characters in the cover letter. If accents or other unusual characters must be drawn in on the manuscript, they should be highlighted and listed in an accompanying note.

COPYRIGHT

It is a condition of publication in the journal that authors grant an exclusive license to the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. As part of the license agreement, authors may use their own material in other publications provided that the journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication, and Oxford University Press is notified in writing and in advance.

Download the Copyright Form(PDF).

OFFPRINTS

The journal will provide authors with a URL for free access to the published version of the article.

Authors are urged to order offprints prior to publication to cover anticipated needs; reordering after the issue has been published is considerably more expensive. Offprints are ordered in increments of 50 by filling out the offprint order form, which should be returned to the Journal office with the page-galley proofs. An offprint order form will be included with the page proofs. Authors may order offprints using this form when they return their proofs.

Download the Offprint Form(PDF).

Behavioral Ecology authors have the option, at an additional charge, to make their paper freely available online immediately upon publication, under the Oxford Open initiative. After your manuscript is accepted, as part of the mandatory licence form required of all corresponding authors, you will be asked to indicate whether or not you wish to pay to have your paper made freely available immediately. If you do not select the Open Access option, your paper will be published with standard subscription-based access and you will not be charged.

For those selecting the Open Access option, the charges for Behavioral Ecology vary depending on the institution at which the corresponding author is based:

Optional Oxford Open charges:
For a corresponding author based at an institution with an online subscription to Behavioral Ecology:

• Regular charge - £900 / $1800 / €1350
  
• List B developing country charge** - £450 / $900 / €675
  
• List A developing country charge** - £0 / $0 / €0
  

For a corresponding author based at an institution that does not subscribe to the online journal:

• Regular charge - £1500 / $3000 / €2250
  
• List B developing country charge** - £750 / $1500 / €1125
  
• List A developing country charge** - £0 /$0 / €0
  

*Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/jnls/devel/ for list of qualifying countries.

The above Open Access charges are in addition to any page charges and color charges that might apply. Orders from the UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge. Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number.

If you choose the Open Access option you will also be asked to complete an Open Access charge form online. You will be automatically directed to the appropriate version of the form depending on whether you are based at an institution with an online subscription to Behavioral Ecology. Therefore, please make sure that you are using an institutional computer when accessing the form. To check whether you are based at a subscribing institution please use the Subscriber Test link for Behavioral Ecology.

Please see these guidelines for reuse of Oxford Open content.

AUTHOR SELF-ARCHIVING/PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY FROM JANUARY 2006

For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

At the point of submission, Behavioral Ecology's policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

As an integral part of the online submission process, Corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and to provide details of these. If the Corresponding author is unable to confirm this information on behalf of all co-authors, the authors in question will then be required to submit a completed Conflict of Interest form to the Editorial Office. It is the Corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy.

If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

FUNDING

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following rules should be followed:

• The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]’
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

An example is given here: ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].’

PERMISSIONS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS AND FIGURES

Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared and if necessary paid for by the author; this includes applications and payments to DACS, ARS, and similar licensing agencies where appropriate. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the editors. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions. Oxford Journals can offer information and documentation to assist authors in securing print and online permissions: please see the Guidelines for Authors section. Information on permissions contacts for a number of main galleries and museums can also be provided. Should you require copies of this, please contact the editorial office of the journal in question or the Oxford Journals Rights department.

LAY SUMMARY GUIDELINES

Purpose

The International Society for Behavioral Ecology has undertaken to provide a Lay Summary of each paper published in Behavioral Ecology. The Lay Summary will appear with the electronic version of the article available on the journal's Web site. The purpose of a Lay Summary is to interpret the context and significance of our published papers in a manner intelligible to interested nonspecialists, thereby increasing the accessibility of our research work to the public at large, and to organizations and individuals whose main function may not be research, but who may nonetheless be interested in research findings.

Guidelines for authors

A Lay Summary is a short (max. 250 word) statement that, in nontechnical language, provides a view of the paper from the perspective of the broad questions of the field, summarizes briefly the current state of knowledge - emphasizing what is not known or understood - and explains the contribution of the paper. A Lay Summary is not a "dumbed down" version of the Abstract of your paper: its aims are rather different. Nor is a Lay Summary specifically about potential or real applications of the results (unless these were the topic of the paper). The Abstract of your paper emphasizes the findings for other specialists who know the history of the field and the context of your questions, who will understand and be interested in details of your methodology, and who will be able to evaluate for themselves the significance of your results. Most of the readership of a Lay Summary will not be in this category.

Assume that the reader of your Lay Summary is an intelligent and interested person who may know something about behavioral ecology, but may not know terms such as EPC, MVT, altricial, phylogeny, or minisatellite. Therefore, avoid technical language and jargon. Many readers of the Lay Summary have not been schooled in the history of the discipline, so provide the necessary background, focusing on generalities rather than specifics. Generally, details of the methods are of little importance. Summarize succinctly what the paper contributed.

Format and process

The Lay Summary is published on the journal's Web site where nonspecialists generally have best access. It is not required as part of the formal review process of a manuscript, but a complete and acceptable Lay Summary is required before a manuscript can be sent to the press for publication.

The Lay Summary must accompany the final version of the manuscript as a separate file clearly labeled "LAY SUMMARY," with the full title of the manuscript and name(s) of the author(s) identical to that on the manuscript. Details are provided to authors when manuscripts are nearly ready to be accepted.

Sample Lay Summaries

From Broom M and Ruxton GD, 2005. You can run—or you can hide: optimal strategies for cryptic prey against pursuit predators. Behav Ecol 16:534–540:

We consider the behaviour of a hiding prey individual, as a predator approaches it. Although the predator has not yet discovered the prey, it is increasingly likely to do so as it gets closer. Further, the closer the predator is to the prey when it discovers it, the more likely it is to capture the prey. These arguments suggest that prey should flee before the predator discovers it. However, fleeing will alert the predator to the presence of the prey and trigger an attack that might not have occurred otherwise. We capture these conflicting pressures in a mathematical model, which we then use to predict the optimal behaviour of both the prey and predator. We argue that the optimal strategy for the prey is either to run as soon as they detect a predator approaching or to only flee in response to having been detected by the predator. The optimal strategy for the predator depends on whether its current trajectory takes it closer or further from the prey. If it is moving away from the prey, the predator should attack immediately on discovering the prey; but if it is moving towards the prey, it should delay its attack until it reaches the point where it is closest.

From McDonald PG, Olsen PD, and Cockburn A, 2005. Sex allocation and nestling survival in a dimorphic raptor: does size matter? Behav Ecol 16:922–930:

If both male and female offspring require the same level of resources to raise (cost), and have an equal likelihood of breeding (benefit), theory predicts parents should produce equal numbers of sons and daughters. In many falcons, females are larger than their male counterparts. Given this, daughters may be expected to require more food from their parents than sons, thereby inflicting a greater cost upon parents and resulting in more sons than daughters being raised. To test these ideas, we examined some of the relative costs and benefits associated with raising sons and daughters of brown falcons, a medium sized falcon where male body weight is 75% that of females. Despite large differences in body size, daughters were not feed more food than sons, indicating that body size differences alone are not good indicators of the food level requirements of nestling birds. However, the smallest nestling in every brood was fed much less than their broodmates, resulting in these small birds remaining relatively small at breeding age. Small male falcons are still able to inherit breeding territories, but small females are unlikely to do so. This difference in the benefits of raising a small member of each sex may explain why small sons were still raised by parents in this study, whereas small daughters were given such a reduced food supply that they all perished soon after hatching.

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

All material to be considered as supplementary data must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for review. Please indicate clearly the material intended as supplementary data upon submission. Also ensure that the supplementary data is referred to in the main manuscript at an appropriate point in the text. It must be supplied to the production department with the article for publication, not at a later date. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication. Files for supplementary data should be clearly marked as such and be accompanied by a summary of the file names and types.

Please note that supplementary data will not be copyedited, so ensure that it is clearly and succinctly presented, and that the style of terms conforms with the rest of the paper. A maximum of 5 files is acceptable to make up the supplementary data unit for an article. The maximum size per file should not exceed 2 MB.