How to format your references using the Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Grier DG (2003) A revolution in optical manipulation. Nature 424:810–816

A journal article with 2 authors

Muoio DM, Newgard CB (2004) Biomedicine. Insulin resistance takes a trip through the ER. Science 306:425–426

A journal article with 3 authors

Shalm LK, Adamson RBA, Steinberg AM (2009) Squeezing and over-squeezing of triphotons. Nature 457:67–70

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Liu S, Li P, Dybkov O, et al (2007) Binding of the human Prp31 Nop domain to a composite RNA-protein platform in U4 snRNP. Science 316:115–120

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Ansorge R (2005) Mathematical Models of Fluiddynamics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG

An edited book

Crowhurst M (ed) (2015) Beginning Teachers: Reviewing Disastrous Lessons. SensePublishers, Rotterdam

A chapter in an edited book

Fukuda S (2015) Human Centered Industry. In: Fukuda S (ed) Emotional Engineering (Vol. 3). Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 39–54

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Blog post

Luntz S (2015) Plants Can Call Predators For Help When Threatened By Herbivores. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/crops-could-call-carnivorous-help/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (2005) Information Technology: FBI Is Taking Steps to Develop an Enterprise Architecture, but Much Remains to Be Accomplished. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Burnley T (2012) Psychotherapist as Modern-Day Shaman. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Brantley B (2017) Marginalized Souls, Magnified. New York Times C1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Grier 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Grier 2003; Muoio and Newgard 2004).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Muoio and Newgard 2004)
Three or more authors: (Liu et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Abbreviation	Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
ISSN (print)	0340-5443
ISSN (online)	1432-0762
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics