How to format your references using the The American Naturalist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Naturalist. 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

Maldacena, J. 2014. Cosmology. Testing gauge/gravity duality on a quantum black hole. Science (New York, N.Y.) 344:806–807.

A journal article with 2 authors

Benartzi, S., and R. H. Thaler. 2013. Economics. Behavioral economics and the retirement savings crisis. Science (New York, N.Y.) 339:1152–1153.

A journal article with 3 authors

Suzuki, G., N. Shimazu, and M. Tanaka. 2012. A yeast prion, Mod5, promotes acquired drug resistance and cell survival under environmental stress. Science (New York, N.Y.) 336:355–359.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Kobayashi, T., F. Nagase, K. Hotta, and K. Oka. 2013. Crosstalk between second messengers predicts the motility of the growth cone. Scientific reports 3:3118.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zeng, K., W. Lou, and M. Li. 2011. Multihop Wireless Networks. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

France, B., and V. Compton, eds. 2012. Bringing Communities Together: Connecting Learners with Scientists or Technologists. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

A chapter in an edited book

Shilov, V. V., and S. A. Silantiev. 2016. ‘Machines à Comparer les Idées’ of Semen Korsakov: First Step Towards AI. Pages 71–86 in A. Tatnall and C. Leslie, eds. International Communities of Invention and Innovation: IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on the History of Computing, HC 2016, Brooklyn, NY, USA, May 25-29, 2016, Revised Selected Papers, IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 The American Naturalist.

Blog post

Taub, B. 2016. A Spider Has Been Seen Eating A Crayfish For The First Time. IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 2007. Federal Aviation Administration: Observations on Selected Changes to FAA’s Funding and Budget Structure in the Administration’s Reauthorization Proposal (No. GAO-07-625T). 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

Makovec, M. G. 2008. A study of the factors predicting attrition and contributing to the attrition rate of high school teachers in Hampton Roads, Virginia (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Mueller, B. 2015. $25,000 Fine Proposed in Taxi’s Snub of Family. New York Times, p. A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Maldacena 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Benartzi and Thaler 2013; Maldacena 2014).

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

Two authors: (Benartzi and Thaler 2013)
Three or more authors: (Kobayashi et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Naturalist
Abbreviation	Am. Nat.
ISSN (print)	0003-0147
ISSN (online)	1537-5323
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics