Animal Behaviour publishes papers by scientists conducting research at locations
around the globe. Publication is, therefore, based upon mutual trust between publisher and authors. Professional integrity in the conduct
and reporting of research is an absolute requirement of publication in the journal, as is a willingness to share information with other
members of the scientific community. Consequently, as a condition of publication in Animal Behaviour, authors must agree both
to honour any reasonable request for materials or methods needed to verify or replicate experiments reported in the journal and to make
available, upon request, any data sets upon which published studies are based. Anyone who encounters a persistent refusal to comply
with these guidelines, or has reason to suspect some other departure from acceptable standards of scientific conduct, should contact
the appropriate Executive Editor (European or American) of the journal. The Executive Editor will act in accordance with the guidelines
of the U.K. Committee on Publication Ethics (www.publicationethics.org.uk) (European Editor) or the Animal Behavior Society
Code of Ethics (North American Editor) and may inform an author's institution of a purported infraction. Statements on scientific integrity
by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour and Animal Behavior Society can be found at, respectively, www.asab.org
and www.animalbehavior.org.
Instructions for Authors
Prospective authors should consult
these instructions carefully before preparing manuscripts for submission. The Editorial Offices may decline to review manuscripts that
do not comply with the requirements for content and format. Papers that are accepted but incorrectly prepared or whose English is poor,
may also be subject to delays in the press. Non-native English speakers can help to avoid delays by getting their paper checked by a
native English speaker before submission, if possible, or by using a language and copy-editing service (see Language services below).
After acceptance, the Editorial Offices will edit papers in accordance with the house style and will help authors to communicate effectively.
Authors may find recent articles in Animal Behaviour to be useful models for the instructions outlined below.
General
Information
Article types
• Research papers. Animal Behaviour publishes original papers relating
to all aspects of the behaviour of animals, including humans. Papers may be field, laboratory or theoretical studies. Preference is given
to studies that are likely to be of interest to the broad readership of the Journal and that test explicit hypotheses rather than being
purely descriptive. • Reviews. These should address fundamental issues relating to behaviour and provide new insights into
the subject(s) they cover. Original interdisciplinary syntheses are especially welcome. Reviews should be no longer than 6000 words (excluding
references) and should include an abstract of up to 250 words. In the first instance, a preliminary outline of up to 600 words should
be sent to the US or UK Editorial Office, by email, according to the geographical location or society membership of the author (see Submission
below). The decision as to whether to proceed to a full review then rests with the Executive Editors or invited advisers. Contributions
submitted on this basis will be subjected to the same refereeing process as normal manuscripts. • Essays. These should address
fundamental issues relating to behaviour and provide new insights into the subject(s) they cover. In contrast to Reviews, Essays provide
an opportunity for authors to express opinions, consider the subject area in a historical context and speculate on its future development.
Essays should be no longer than 6000 words (excluding references) and should include an abstract of up to 250 words. In the first instance,
a preliminary outline of up to 600 words should be sent to the US or UK Editorial Office, by email, according to the geographical location
or society membership of the author (see Submission below). The decision as to whether to proceed to a full essay then rests with the
Executive Editors or invited advisers. Contributions submitted on this basis will be subjected to the same refereeing process as normal
manuscripts. • Commentaries. The Commentaries section of the Journal provides an opportunity to raise issues of general importance
to the study of behaviour, including statistical analysis, theory, methodology and ethics. Unless there are clearly broader implications
for the study of behaviour as a whole, critiques of particular papers or issues of more local interest should be reserved for the Forum
section (see below). Decisions as to whether borderline submissions are more appropriate to the Commentaries or Forum section rest with
the Executive Editors. Contributions should be brief, normally not more than six printed pages, and should not contain an abstract. Methodological
contributions may be longer, subject to the discretion of the Executive Editors. The initial decision as to prima facie merit rests with
the Executive Editors or invited advisers. Contributions with prima facie merit are subjected to the same refereeing process as normal
manuscripts, but responses or complementary articles may be solicited by the Executive Editors at their discretion. Other contributions
are returned unrefereed to the author(s). •Forum. The Forum section is published on ScienceDirect with contributions listed
in the contents of the relevant hardcopy issue and cited as indicated in References below. The section accepts critiques of published
papers relevant to the areas of interest of the Journal, and provides an opportunity for constructive exchanges on issues surrounding
particular fields of study. Critiques of papers published in Animal Behaviour should be submitted to the Office (US or UK) that
published the original article (the manuscript numbers of papers processed by the US Office have the prefix A). Submission, review and
acceptance procedures are as for Commentaries (see above), but there is no word limit. • More general correspondence on matters
relating to behavioural research is published, unrefereed, in the newsletters of ASAB and ABS. Such correspondence should be sent to
the newsletter editors: Anahita J.N. Kazem, Institute of Biology, Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU), N-7491 Trondheim,
Norway (fax: +47 7359 1309; email: asab-news@bio.ntnu.no) for ASAB; M. R. Morris, Department of Biological Sciences, Ohio
University, Athens, OH 45701, U.S.A. (fax: 740 593 4527; email: morrism@oak.cats.ohiou.edu) for ABS.
Language
Services
Prior to submission, authors for whom English is not their first language may find it helpful to use a language and
copyediting service such as that available through http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authors.authors/languagepolishing or
may contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note that Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility
for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please
refer to our Terms & Conditions http://www.elsevier.com//termsconditions
Submission
•Authors should
submit manuscripts online to (http://ees.elsevier.com/anbeh). When submitting online, authors are requested to select the
article type (Research paper, Review, Essay, Commentary, Forum). Each category of article is further divided into US and UK articles
(e.g. US Research paper, UK Research paper, etc.) depending on whether the US or UK Editorial Office is responsible for processing the
manuscript. Authors whose current address is in the Americas, or neighbouring islands, or who are members of the Animal Behavior Society
should select the US article types and authors in other geographical areas or who are members of the Association for the Study of Animal
Behaviour should select the UK article types. Hard copies are not required in addition to copies submitted online. Authors who are submitting
a manuscript online for the first time should read the Author Tutorial on the submission site. For enquiries relating to submissions
via EES, please contact the Journal Manager at Elsevier via email (yanbe@elsevier.com). •To submit outlines
for Reviews and Essays and for other general correspondence, the address of the US office is: Lori Pierce, Managing Editor, Animal Behaviour
Editorial Office, 2611 East 10th Street, # 160, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408-2603, U.S.A. (fax: 812 856 5542; email: lopierce@indiana.edu).
Correspondence about book reviews handled through the North American office should be sent to Dr P. Loesche, Department of Psychology,
Box 351525, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, U.S.A. (fax: 206 616 4794; email: loes@u.washington.edu). The
address of the UK office is: Dr A.K. Turner, Managing Editor, Animal Behaviour Editorial Office, School of Biology, University of Nottingham,
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K. (fax: (0) 115 9 513 249, email: angela.turner@nottingham.ac.uk). •Together
with the manuscript, authors should submit a cover letter (see below for points to include in the letter), any abstracts and other published,
in press or submitted material that overlaps or duplicates the submitted manuscript, and any letters of permission to reproduce published
material. Published, in press or submitted material should be uploaded as 'Related material' on EES. Revised or resubmitted manuscripts
should also include a Lay Summary (see below) and a detailed explanation of how the author has dealt with each of the reviewers' and
Editor's comments. These comments should be uploaded as 'Revision Comments' on EES. Submissions of revised manuscripts should include
a Lay Summary. The Lay Summary should be a short (maximum 150 words) statement that describes the background to and significance of the
main findings of the article. It should be nontechnical and intelligible to the nonspecialist. Lay summaries will be published on the
ASAB and ABS Web sites and may be used as the basis for press releases to the media. The Journal's aim in publishing lay summaries is
to increase the accessibility of its research findings and to increase public awareness of animal behaviour research. •Doctoral
theses are usually not written in a style suitable for publication in Animal Behaviour. Chapters from theses will therefore normally
need to be condensed, reformatted and revised substantially before being submitted as manuscripts. References in journal manuscripts
should usually not be cited as exhaustively as they are in doctoral dissertations. Prior to submission, inexperienced authors are especially
advised to give a manuscript to friends and colleagues for comment. •Use active voice whenever feasible, and write in the first
person. •Use British spelling and grammar conventions throughout, except in non-British quotations and references.
File
formats
The following file formats are acceptable for the initial submission: Word or WordPerfect, RTF, LaTeX2e, TIFF, GIF,
JPEG, PostScript, PICT, bmp, Excel, PowerPoint or EPS. For the final accepted and revised version of the manuscript, graphics must be
in TIFF, EPS or MS Office. Please do not submit material (initially or for the final version) as PDF, PhotoShop or Adobe Illustrator
files.
Please note that the Publisher cannot accept electronic copies of manuscripts in LaTex2e. Although this format is acceptable
during peer review, final versions of manuscripts should be converted to another format. If this is not possible, hard copies of the
manuscript, with double line spacing, may be requested.
Copyright
• Papers are accepted on the understanding
that they are subject to editorial revision and that they are contributed only to this Journal. Copyright in the article, including the
right to reproduce the article in all forms and media, shall be assigned exclusively to the Journal. The transfer of copyright to the
Journal takes effect when the manuscript is accepted for publication. • The Publisher will send the author a copyright transfer
form agreement and offprint order form by email at receipt of the accepted and copyedited manuscript at Elsevier. The author must complete
these forms (either on-line or by fax or mail; instructions are provided with the forms) and return them to the Publisher. The author
has a choice of receiving one electronic offprint or 50 printed offprints free of charge and may purchase additional offprints. Authors
may post the final PDF version of their article on personal and/or institutional Web pages after it has appeared in the Journal.
Proofs
The author will receive a PDF proof by email and should return corrections to the appropriate Editorial Office within
24 hours.
Digital Object Identifiers
Elsevier assigns a unique digital object identifier (DOI) to every article it publishes.
The DOI appears on the title page of the article. It is assigned after the article has been accepted for publication and persists throughout
the lifetime of the article. Because of its persistence, it can be used to query Elsevier for information on the article during the production
process, to find the article on the Internet through various Web sites, including ScienceDirect, and to cite the article in academic
references. Further information may be found by clicking on the 'Cite or Link using DOI' query at the top of every abstract page of each
article on ScienceDirect.
Author enquiries
• For enquires relating to submissions prior to acceptance, please
contact the Journal Manager via email (yanbe@elsevier.com). •For enquiries relating to articles that have been
accepted by the Journal and forwarded to the Publisher for typesetting, please visit the Author Gateway from Elsevier at http://authors.elsevier.com.
The Author Gateway also provides the facility to track articles at the Publisher and set up email alerts to inform authors when an article's
status has changed, as well as detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Authors will
be informed when an article is sent to the Publisher for typesetting, and will be provided with further contact details for questions
arising about an article, especially those relating to proofs, after its receipt at Elsevier.
Disclaimer
No responsibility
is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise,
or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the Journal. Because of rapid advances in the
medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made. Although all advertising material
is expected to conform to ethical (medical) standards, inclusion in the Journal does not constitute a guarantee or endorsement of the
quality or value of such a product or of the claims made of it by its manufacturer.
Cover Letter
A cover letter by the
corresponding author must accompany the manuscript and should provide the following information.
• Explanation of any overlap
with other articles published or in press in journals, books or conference proceedings, or in preparation. Animal Behaviour
will not consider submissions that have been published elsewhere, nor will it republish data found in other publications, unless the
data are re-evaluated to provide new information not found in the original. Abstracts that both appear in published conference proceedings
with ISBNs or ISSNs, such as special editions of journals, and provide explicit quantitative summaries of the key results, are considered
as prior publication. Overlap between submitted manuscripts and published abstracts containing qualitative descriptions of the manuscript
will be allowed, provided that such abstracts are not verbatim reproductions of the abstract contained within the submitted manuscript.
Include all abstracts and other published materials with the submitted manuscript as 'Related Material' on EES.
ASAB/ABS Confirmation
Form
Authors will be asked during online submission to confirm the following points:
•This material has not been
published or submitted for publication elsewhere. •All coauthors know that this manuscript has been submitted for publication.
•An explanation of overlap with other articles (published or in press in journals, books or conference proceedings, or in preparation)
has been included in the cover letter accompanying this manuscript. •In the case of Forum critiques of published papers, the
author(s) of the target article has been contacted and trivial points of difference or misunderstanding resolved. •This research
adhered to the ASAB/ABS Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research (updated in each January issue of the Journal and on the Journal
Web site: http://www.elsevier.com/framework_products/promis_misc/ASAB2006.pdf), the legal requirements of the country in
which the work was carried out, and all institutional guidelines. The Guide to Ethical Information Required for Animal Behaviour
Papers (http://www.elsevier.com/framework_products/promis_misc/ethyanbe.doc) has been consulted and requirements met.
•This research was/was not reviewed and approved by an appropriate institutional and/or governmental authority regulating research
with animals. •Names (and email addresses, if available) of four referees have been included. Note that the Editors reserve
the right to choose referees other than, or in addition to, those suggested.
Animal Welfare
If ethical considerations
arose in the course of the study, the author should describe in the manuscript (see Methods) how those considerations were addressed.
For example, information may need to be provided on the following areas: housing and general maintenance, disposal of animals including
release of wild-caught animals, culling of litters, techniques causing desertion, aggression, predation, use of live animals as food,
parasitism, techniques or manipulations (e.g. physiological, pharmacological, genetic, blood and tissue sampling, use of anaesthetics
and restraints, plumage alterations), trapping, marking, radiotagging, food or water deprivation, manipulation of diets and access to
food, social deprivation, brood manipulations, environmental manipulations, conservation implications, details of licences/permissions
obtained for the study. If authors fail to include relevant information, we shall request a revision and resubmission of the paper. In
exceptional cases, where unresolved ethical questions remain, the manuscript may be sent to the ABS Animal Care Committee or the ASAB
Ethical Committee for additional refereeing. In such cases, the decision as to whether the manuscript is accepted for publication remains
with the Editor or, in the final instance, the Executive Editor.
Formatting of Text •Type all manuscripts with double
line spacing and aligned left, including the abstract, references, figure legends and tables. •Use a font size of 11 or larger.
•Print pages on one side only for editing purposes. •Manuscripts should have continuous line numbers, page numbers
and wide margins throughout (including the abstract, references, figure legends and tables). •Indent each new paragraph, except
for the first paragraph of the main text and the paragraph immediately after each main heading. •Use consistent punctuation;
insert only a single space between words and after punctuation. •Type text without end-of-line hyphenation, except for compound
words. •Use initial capitals only for proper names (e.g. names of people, places or proprietary products), not for animals
or for words such as 'experiment' or 'group'. Initial capitals may be used to label categories of behaviour or specifically defined measures.
Do not use italics for these, for emphasis or for foreign words. •Use two returns to end headings and paragraphs. •Do
not use lower-case 'l' (el) for '1' (one) or 'O'(oh) for '0' (zero); they have different typesetting values.
Headings
Headings
in the body of the manuscript should be brief. The usual main headings for Research papers are: Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments
and References (Introduction is not used). Papers should not be forced to fit into this pattern of headings, however, if they do not
naturally do so. Type main headings in capitals on a separate line and centre them on the page (note that Commentaries and Forum articles
lack this heading type). Type subheadings at the left of the page and on a separate line, and begin the main words with a capital letter.
Start sub-subheadings on a new line, aligned full left, and underline them. Start the text on a new line after subheadings and sub-subheadings.
When presenting multiple experiments, authors may use main headings for the titles of each experiment, with the Methods and Results of
each experiment listed as subheadings. Try to keep subheadings short enough to fit within a single column.
Parts of the Manuscript
Arrange manuscripts in the following order: title page, abstract, keywords, text, acknowledgments, references, appendices, tables,
figure legends, figures.
Title page
The title page must include the following information.
•Title. This should
be brief and informative, and should not exceed 120 characters. Avoid abbreviations, as well as part numbers unless the papers are to
be published consecutively in the same issue of the Journal. •Running headline. Provide a short title that does not exceed
60 spaces, including the author's name(s) (using 'et al.' for three or more authors) and all punctuation marks. •Authors' names
(in capitals) and academic affiliations below the title. Affiliations should not include street, box number, postal (zip) code, country
(when that is obvious) or city, state, province, etc., when that is redundant with the University name. •Correspondence. At
the bottom of the page, give the full postal address and email address (if desired) of the corresponding author and the present postal
addresses of all authors. •A word count for the text.
Abstract
The Abstract should describe the purpose of the
study, outline the major findings and state the main conclusions. It should be concise, informative, explicit and intelligible without
reference to the text. Abstracts should usually be limited to 250 words. Use both common and scientific names of animals at first mention
in the Abstract unless they are given in the title. Avoid using references; if used, give the journal name, volume and page numbers.
Keywords
An alphabetical list of up to 10 keywords, including the common and scientific names of the species studied,
should be provided before the Introduction. Use the classifications from EES whenever possible. Note that the index for each volume will
be made from the article keywords.
Introduction
The Introduction should be brief, not normally exceeding two manuscript
pages. It should explicitly state the aims of the study and place it within the context of existing work. Keep references to a minimum
by citing reviews rather than primary research papers where appropriate.
Methods
The Methods should be sufficiently detailed
to allow someone else to replicate the study. Repetition of methodological details can sometimes be avoided by referring to previous
studies, however. Give the names and addresses of companies providing trademarked products. Always state sample sizes (the number of
animals used in the study) and the age, sex, breed/strain and source of animals. Full details of testing or observational regimes should
be given. If captive animals were used, include details of housing conditions relevant to the study (e.g. cage size and type, bedding,
group size and composition, lighting, temperature, ambient noise conditions, maintenance diets) both during the study and during any
period before the study that might bear on the results. The Methods section may also contain a description of the kinds of statistics
used and the activities that were recorded.
•Ethical note. Where ethical considerations arise from the study, these
should be addressed in the Methods, either in the main Methods section itself (where the additional discussion is relatively minor),
or in a separate subsection of the Methods headed Ethical note. Any ethical implications of the experimental design and procedures should
be identified, and any licences acquired to carry out the work specified. Procedures that were taken to minimize the welfare impact on
subjects, including choice of sample sizes, use of pilot tests and predetermined rules for intervention, should be described. Any steps
taken to enhance the welfare of subjects (e.g. through 'environmental enrichment') should also be indicated. If the study involved keeping
wild animals in captivity, state for how long the animals were captive and whether, where and how they were returned to the wild at the
end of the study.
Results
This section should include only results that are relevant to the hypotheses outlined in
the Introduction and considered in the Discussion. The text should complement material given in Tables or Figures but should not directly
repeat it. Give full details of statistical analysis either in the text or in Tables or Figure legends. Include the type of test, the
precise data to which it was applied, the value of the relevant statistic, the sample size and/or degrees of freedom, and the probability
level. Number Tables and Figures in the order to which they are referred in the text.
Discussion
It is often helpful to
begin the Discussion with a summary of the main results. The main purpose of the Discussion, however, is to comment on the significance
of the results and set them in the context of previous work. The Discussion should be concise and not excessively speculative, and references
should be kept to a minimum by citing review articles as much as possible.
References
For references in the text, give
full surnames for papers by one or two authors, but only the surname of the first author, followed by 'et al.' for three or more (note
that 'et al.' is not underlined). Check that all references in the text are in the reference list and vice versa, that their dates and
spellings match, and that complete bibliographical details are given, including page numbers, names of editors, name of publisher and
full place of publication if the article is published in a book. Check foreign language references particularly carefully for accuracy
of diacritical marks such as accents and umlauts.
Cite references in the text as, for example, Fagen & Young (1978) or, if in
parentheses, as (Murton 1963). Do not use commas to separate the author's name from the date. Use lower-case letters to distinguish between
two papers by the same authors in the same year (e.g. Packer 1979a). List multiple citations in chronological order (e.g. Zahavi 1972;
Halliday 1978; Arnold 1981a, b), using a semicolon to separate each reference. Cite references in the reference list in alphabetical,
and then chronological, order according to the authors' surname and date. To help readers locate 'et al.' citations with the same first
authors in the reference list, list references with three (or more) names after those with two, by date, as in the following sequence:
Marin & Silva 1992
Marin, Silva & Lopez 1986
Marin, Lopez & Silva 1989
Type references in the following form:
Bailey, N. J. 1981. Statistical Methods in Biology. 2nd edn. London: Unibooks.
Emlen, S. T. 1978. The evolution
of cooperative behaviour in birds. In: Behavioural Ecology (Ed. by J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies), pp. 245-281. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.
Robinson, M. H. & Robinson, B. 1970. The stabilimentum of the orb web spider, Argiope argentata: an improbable defense
against predators. Canadian Entomologist, 102, 641-645.
Smith, J. K. 1985. Investigations on a freshwater crab. Ph.D. thesis,
University of Durham.
Forum articles should include volume and part number and Web site address and be cited as:
Johnson,
A. R. 1999. Scent marking in hyaenas: reply to Jones. Animal Behaviour, 57, F41-F43
Because of the ephemeral nature
of many Web sites, other Web citations will be reviewed by the Editors to ensure they are appropriate to an archival journal.
For papers
in the course of publication, use 'in press' to replace the date and give the journal name in the references. Cite unpublished manuscripts
(including those in preparation or submitted), talks and abstracts of talks in the text as 'unpublished data' following a list of all
authors' initials and surnames. Do not include these in the reference list.
Digital Object Identifiers
To facilitate
cross-referencing of articles on the Web, the digital object identifier (DOI) for papers in Elsevier journals should be included in their
reference citation as follows:
Bradbury, J. W. & Vehrencamp, S. L. In press. Economic models of animal communication. Animal Behaviour, doi: 10.1006/anbe.1999.1330.
Jirotkul, M. 1999. Population density influences male-male competition
in guppies. Animal Behaviour, 58, 1169-1175. doi: 10.1006/anbe.1999.1248.
The DOI of a cited paper can be found at the
top of its title page. If authors are aware of a paper's DOI, it would be helpful if they could include it in their citation list.
Tables
Keep Tables as simple as possible and make them understandable without reference to the text. Type each table on a separate page.
In addition: •Use Arabic numerals to number Tables. •Give brief titles above the Table with no punctuation at the
end. •Give extra information (e.g. the results of statistical tests) as a footnote below the table. •Do not divide
tables into two or more parts. •Tables should not contain vertical rules, and the main body of the table should not contain
horizontal rules. •Large tables should be narrow (across the page) and long (down the page) rather than wide and short, so
that they can be fitted into the column width of the Journal.
Figures •A figure and its legend should be sufficiently informative
that the results can be understood without reference to the text. Figure legends should not appear on the same page as figures. •The
publisher will allow one page of free colour per article for colour figures, where its use is integral to useful illustration of the
data. More than one figure may be included on this page. •Figures should be large enough to allow for reproduction but not larger
than A4 size, and should be designed with the widths of the columns in the Journal in mind. •The preferred point symbols are
open circle, open square, open triangle, filled circle, filled square, filled triangle. The preferred shadings are white, black and bold
hatching. Avoid stippling, which does not reproduce well. •Ticks should be drawn inside the figure axes; they should not be
extended to form lines across the whole figure. •Give keys and other explanations either in the legend or on the figure itself.
•Number figures consecutively in Arabic numerals. •Abbreviate 'Figure' to 'Fig.' and 'Figures' to 'Figs' except when
starting a sentence. •The Publisher will redraw and label figures as necessary to conform to the Journal's house style. Artwork
will be destroyed shortly after the paper is published unless the author requests otherwise.
Electronic supplementary material
Material that aids in the understanding or clarification of the printed article, such as video clips (AVI or MPEG), colour photographs
(GIF or JPEG), sound recordings (WAV), or large data tables, may be posted on ScienceDirect with electronic access details provided in
the text. Supplementary material should be uploaded as such on to EES or sent separately to the appropriate Editorial Office, on DVDs
(four copies). The material will be considered to be part of a manuscript and will be reviewed as such. Instructions regarding formats
for supplementary material can be found under Artwork Instructions on Elsevier's Author Gateway page (http://authors.elsevier.com).
Footnotes
Use footnotes only to add information below the body of a Table.
Numerals
Write numbers
of 10 or more as numerals except at the beginning of a sentence. Write the numbers one to nine in words, unless they precede units of
measure or are used as designators. Quote times of day using the 24-hour clock without a break or point in the middle and followed by
'hours'; e.g. '1515 hours'. Give years in full; e.g. '1986-1987' and dates as 1 January 2000.
Abbreviations
Units and
abbreviations should conform to the Systeme International d'Unites. Avoid acronyms.
Statistical conventions
Means and
standard errors/standard deviations (and medians and interquartile ranges/confidence limits), with their associated sample sizes, are
given in the format X SE = 10.20 1.01 g, N = 15, not X = 10.20, SE = 1.01, N = 15.
For significance tests, give the name of
the test followed by a colon, the test statistic and its value, the degrees of freedom or sample size (whichever is the convention for
the test) and the P value (note that F values have two degrees of freedom). The different parts of the statistical quotation are separated
by a comma.
If the test statistic is conventionally quoted with degrees of freedom, these are presented as a subscript to the test
statistic. For example:
ANOVA: F1,11 = 7.89, P = 0.017
Kruskal-Wallis test: H11 = 287.8, P = 0.001
Chi-square test: X22 = 0.19, P = 0.91
Paired t test: t12 = 1.99, P = 0.07
If the test is conventionally quoted
with the sample size, this should follow the test statistic value. For example:
Spearman rank correlation: rS = 0.80,
N = 11, P < 0.01
Wilcoxon signed-ranks test: T = 6, N = 14, P < 0.01
Mann-Whitney U test: U = 74, N1 = N2
= 17, P < 0.02
P values for significant outcomes can be quoted as below a threshold significance value (e.g. P < 0.05, 0.01,
0.001), but wherever possible should be quoted as an exact probability value. Departure from a significance threshold of 0.05 should
be stated and justified in the Methods. Marginally nonsignificant outcomes can be indicated as exact probability values or as P <
0.1. Nonsignificant outcomes should be indicated with an exact probability value whenever possible, or as NS or P > 0.05, as appropriate
for the test. State whether a test is one tailed or two tailed (or specific or nonspecific in the case of Meddis' nonparametric ANOVAs).
One-tailed (or specific) tests should be used with caution. Their use is justified only when there are strong a priori reasons for predicting
the direction of a difference or trend and results in the opposite direction can reasonably be regarded as equivalent to no difference
or trend at all. Authors are referred to Kimmel (1957, Psychological Bulletin, 54, 315-353).
Do not quote decimals with
naked points, for example quote 0.01, not .01, or normally to more than three decimal places (the exception being P values for significance
tests, which may be quoted to four decimal places where appropriate, e.g. 0.0001).
Regressions and analyses of variance.
The significance of regressions should be tested with F or t but not the correlation coefficient r. R2 should be
quoted with both regressions and parametric analyses of variance.
Multiple range tests. Unplanned multiple range tests following
ANOVA should be avoided unless their appropriateness for the comparisons in question is verified explicitly. Authors are referred to
the review by Day & Quinn (1989, Ecological Monographs, 59, 433-463).
Power tests. Where a significance test
based on a small sample size yields a nonsignificant result, explicit consideration should be given to the power of the data for accepting
the null hypothesis. Authors are referred to Thomas & Juanes (1996, Animal Behaviour, 52, 856-859) and Colegrave & Ruxton
(2003, Behavioral Ecology, 14, 446-447) for guidance on the appropriate use of power tests. Providing a value for power based
on a priori tests is preferred. Values of observed power are not appropriate. Authors should consider effect sizes and their confidence
intervals in drawing conclusions regarding the null hypothesis.
Transformations. Where data have been transformed for parametric
significance tests, the nature of the transformation and the reason for its selection (e.g. log x, x2, arcsine) should
be stated.
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