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

Prantzos N (2016) Cosmology: Rare isotopic insight into the Universe. Nature 529:33–34

A journal article with 2 authors

Zeller D, Booth S (2005) Costs and benefits of regulating mercury. Science 310:777–9; author reply 777-9

A journal article with 3 authors

Westover KD, Bushnell DA, Kornberg RD (2004) Structural basis of transcription: separation of RNA from DNA by RNA polymerase II. Science 303:1014–1016

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Uehlein N, Lovisolo C, Siefritz F, Kaldenhoff R (2003) The tobacco aquaporin NtAQP1 is a membrane CO2 pore with physiological functions. Nature 425:734–737

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Aksamija A (2016) Integrating Innovation in Architecture. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Bouguettaya A, Krueger I, Margaria T (eds) (2008) Service-Oriented Computing – ICSOC 2008: 6th International Conference, Sydney, Australia, December 1-5, 2008. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Franke T, Hoppe RHW, Linsenmann C, Wixforth A (2012) Projection Based Model Reduction for Optimal Design of the Time-dependent Stokes System. In: Leugering G, Engell S, Griewank A, et al. (eds) Constrained Optimization and Optimal Control for Partial Differential Equations. Springer, Basel, pp 75–98

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

Hamilton K (2016) Is Technology Making Us Dumber Or Smarter? Yes. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/is-technology-making-us-dumber-or-smarter-yes/. 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 (1991) Tax System Modernization: Status of On-Line Files Initiative and Telecommunications Planning. 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

Parsons AT (2010) Metal-catalyzed annulations of strained cycloalkanes. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina

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

Poniewozik J (2017) The President Changes His Tone, if Not His Tune. New York Times A18

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Prantzos 2016).
This sentence cites two references (Zeller and Booth 2005; Prantzos 2016).

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

Two authors: (Zeller and Booth 2005)
Three or more authors: (Uehlein et al. 2003)

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