How to format your references using the Behavioral Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Behavioral Ecology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Wood J. 2005. Obituary: Alastair Cameron (1925-2005). Nature. 438(7069):752

A journal article with 2 authors

Cheng L, AghaKouchak A. 2014. Nonstationary precipitation Intensity-Duration-Frequency curves for infrastructure design in a changing climate. Sci Rep. 4:7093

A journal article with 3 authors

Wilson RI, Turner GC, Laurent G. 2004. Transformation of olfactory representations in the Drosophila antennal lobe. Science. 303(5656):366–370

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Reilly J et al. 2001. Climate change. Uncertainty and climate change assessments. Science. 293(5529):430–433

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stoop I, Billiet J, Koch A, Fitzgerald R. 2010. Improving Survey Response. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Patton W. 2014. Career Development and Systems Theory: Connecting Theory and Practice. McMahon M, editor. Vol 2 SensePublishers. (Career Development Series, Connecting Theory and Practice).

A chapter in an edited book

Tang WH, Wu QH. 2011. Thermoelectric Analogy Thermal Models of Power Transformers. In: Wu QH, editor. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence. Springer; p 55–71 (Power Systems).

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.

Blog post

Felton J. 2017. IFLScience; [accessed 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/flatearthers-experiment-goes-viral-just-not-in-the-way-hed-hoped/

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. 1995. Amtrak: Early Progress Made in Implementing Strategic and Business Plan, but Obstacles Remain. U.S. Government Printing Office. Report No.: T-RCED-95-227.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dair C. 2015. Development of a nutrition-related curriculum for sustainable food waste management for foodservice operations [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Walsh MW. 2016. Puerto Rico Proposes Plan to Delay Its Debt Payments to Free Up Cash. New York Times. B3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wood 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Wood 2005; Cheng and AghaKouchak 2014).

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

Two authors: (Cheng and AghaKouchak 2014)
Three or more authors: (Reilly et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Behavioral Ecology
Abbreviation	Behav. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1045-2249
ISSN (online)	1465-7279
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics