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Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Online submission and review of manuscripts is now mandatory for all types of papers submitted to Functional Ecology. Please read and follow the instructions for authors given below. When your manuscript has been prepared in accordance with these instructions and you are ready to submit online, go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fe-besjournals. All subsequent correspondence regarding papers and all other enquiries should be sent to the Managing Editor, Liz Baker, at managingeditor@functionalecology.org

Editorial Policy Functional Ecology publishes original papers in organismal ecology, including physiological ecology, behavioural ecology and evolutionary ecology, and their implications for community and ecosystem patterns and processes. Papers may describe experimental, comparative or theoretical studies on any types of organism. Work that is purely descriptive, or that focuses on population dynamics (without investigation of the underlying factors influencing population dynamics) will not be accepted unless it sheds light on those specific areas mentioned above.

Types of Papers Published Functional Ecology publishes four types of papers.

Standard Papers - a typical experimental, comparative or theoretical paper.
Reviews - syntheses of topics of broad ecological interest.
Perspectives - short articles presenting new ideas (without data) intended to stimulate scientific debate.
Commentaries - short communications on a paper within an issue or on a topical subject.

Authors interested in submitting Reviews are encouraged to contact the Reviews and Special Features Editor, Professor Charles Fox.

Page Limits The journal does not impose specific length constraints on papers. However, preference is given to shorter, more concise papers. Papers may be returned for shortening before review if the editor deems the paper to be longer than the topic or data warrant. Papers that will be longer than 10-12 typeset pages are usually returned for shortening before review.

Animal Welfare and Legal Policy Researchers must have proper regard for conservation and animal welfare considerations. Attention is drawn to the Guidelines for the Treatment of Animals in Research and Teaching. Any possible adverse consequences of the work for ecosystems, populations or individual organisms must be weighed against the possible gains in knowledge and its practical applications. Authors must state in their manuscript that their work conforms to the legal requirements of the country in which it was carried out, and should provide permit numbers (when available) in the methods or acknowledgements. Editors may seek advice from reviewers on ethical matters and the final decision will rest with the editors.

Publication Ethics On submission of a paper authors will be asked whether any of the data or content of the submitted paper is already in the public domain (e.g. in a publicly accessible pre-print repository or report) and to confirm that references have been included to any relevant source/s in the manuscript. Additionally once a paper is accepted, in signing the Exclusive Licence Form the authors sign to represent that the contribution has not been submitted elsewhere for publication. Dual publication of an article is not permitted. All queries should be directed to managingeditor@functionalecology.org.

This journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Conflicts of Interest
The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise, that might be perceived as influencing an author’s objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or indirectly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include but are not limited to patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker’s fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication in this journal.

If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission.
It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and to collectively list in the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief, in the manuscript (in the footnotes, Conflict of Interest or Acknowledgments section), and in the online submission system ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Manuscript Submission Functional Ecology has a fully web-based system for the submission and review of manuscripts. Authors should submit their manuscripts online. Full instructions (and a helpline) are accessible from the 'Get Help Now' icon on the submission site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fe-besjournals
Following submission, or if you experience any difficulties with submission, please direct your enquiries to the Managing Editor, Liz Baker, at managingeditor@functionalecology.org

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the following guidelines.

All submitted papers must be double-spaced, with sequential line numbers throughout the entire document. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that the submission is complete and correctly formatted, to avoid delay or rejection. Please refer to the Functional Ecology Manuscript Template for an example of manuscript formatting.

During submission, all authors must confirm that:
the work as submitted has not been published or accepted for publication, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere, either in whole or substantial part;
the work is original and all necessary acknowledgements have been made;
all authors and relevant institutions have read the submitted version of the manuscript and approve its submission;
all persons entitled to authorship have been so included;
the work conforms to the legal requirements of the country in which it was carried out, and to accepted international ethical standards, including those relating to conservation and animal welfare, and to the journal's policy on these matters (see 'Animal Welfare and Legal Policy' above).

Manuscript Tracking Manuscripts under consideration can be tracked on Manuscript Central. Authors can track their manuscripts through the production process to publication online and in print using Author Services. Authors will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided. Visit the Wiley-Blackwell Author Services page for more details on online production tracking, tips on article preparation and submission, and more.

Supporting Information Functional Ecology does not publish appendices in the printed version of the journal. However, supporting information that is referred to in the text may be made available as an online-only document on Wiley Online Library. Guidelines are available by clicking the Instructions & Forms tab in ScholarOne Manuscript submission page. All supporting information should be submitted online with the initial submission of the manuscript. Supporting information is subject to peer review along with the manuscript.

Pre-submission English-language Editing Authors for whom English is a second language may wish to consider having their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/english_language.asp All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

Manuscript Style and Formatting
Standard Papers. A standard paper is a typical experimental, comparative or theoretical paper. Although we do not impose length restrictions on papers, we do require that papers make appropriate use of the space available.

The typescript should be arranged as follows:

Title page. This should contain the following.

A concise and informative title. Do not include the authorities for taxonomic names in the title.
A list of authors' names, with names and addresses of their Institutions.
The name, address and e-mail address of the correspondence author to whom proofs will be sent.
A running headline of not more than 45 characters.

Summary. This should list the main results and conclusions, using simple, factual, numbered statements.

Summaries are typically less than 350 words and should be understandable in isolation and by the non-specialist.
Summaries should start with a bullet point 1 describing the broad conceptual question addressed by the study, and only delve into the study system and specific question in bullet point 2.
Summaries should also end with a final bullet point highlighting the conceptual advance(s) that comes from the current study; i.e. it should highlight the broader conceptual implication of the results and conclusions of the current study.
Advice for optimizing your Summary (and Title) so that your paper is more likely to be found in online searches is provided at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/seo.asp

Key-words. A list in alphabetical order not exceeding ten words or short phrases, excluding words used in the title.

Introduction. The Introduction should state the reason for doing the work, the nature of the hypothesis or hypotheses under consideration, and the essential background. Though the exact structure of Introductions will vary among papers, they should always start by developing the broad conceptual context for the work before delving into the details of the study system and the specific question as framed for this paper.

Materials and methods. This section should provide sufficient details of the techniques to enable the work to be repeated. Do not describe or refer to commonplace statistical tests in Methods but allude to them briefly in Results. Details that are valuable but not critical can be presented in an Appendix to be published as online supporting information.

Results. The results should draw attention in the text to important details shown in tables and figures.

Discussion. This should point out the significance of the results in relation to the reasons for doing the work, and place them in the context of other work.

Acknowledgements. In addition to acknowledging collaborators, research assistants, and previous reviewers of your manuscript, include relevant permit numbers (including institutional animal use permits), acknowledgment of funding sources, and give recognition to nature reserves or other organizations that made this work possible.

References (see Specifications)

Tables (see Specifications). These should be referred to in the text as Table 1, Table 2, etc. Do not present the same data in both figure and table form. Do not use an excessive number of digits when writing a decimal number to represent the mean of a set of measurements (the number of digits should reflect the precision of the measurement).

Figures (see Specifications). Figures should be referred to in the text as Fig. 1, etc. (note Figs 1 and 2 with no period). Illustrations should be referred to as Figures. When possible, include a key to symbols on the figure itself rather than in the figure legend.

Reviews and Perspectives. Most Reviews and Perspectives will be in essay format, with the subject headings dependent on the topic of the paper. See recent editions of the journal for examples.

Manuscript Specifications
Manuscripts. Manuscripts should be typed in double spacing with a generous margin. The paper must include sequential line numbering throughout, and pages should be numbered consecutively, including those containing acknowledgements, references, tables and figure legends. Authors should submit the main document as a RTF or Word file. Figures can be embedded or uploaded as separate files. The RTF and Word will be converted to PDF (portable document format) upon upload. Reviewers will review the PDF version while the Word file will remain accessible by the Editorial Office. Manuscripts must be in English, and spelling should conform to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Please refer to the Functional Ecology Manuscript Template for an example of manuscript formatting.

Figures. Please submit electronic artwork as TIFF files (for half-tones) or non-rasterized EPS files (for vector graphics) if possible. Detailed information on the publisher's digital illustration standards is available at http://authorservices.wiley.com/electronicartworkguidelines.pdf. When uploaded the appropriate file designation should be selected from the options on Manuscript Central.

Please ensure that symbols, labels, etc. are large enough for 50% reduction. Figures should not be boxed and tick marks should be on the inside of the axes. If several photographs are used together to make one figure, they should be well matched for tonal range. All figure files should be labelled with the manuscript number and figure number.

Colour photographs or other figures online incur no costs however it is the policy of Functional Ecology for authors to pay the full cost for their print reproduction (currently £150 for the first figure, £50 thereafter). If no funds are available to cover colour costs, the journal offers free colour reproduction online (with black-and-white reproduction in print). If authors require this, they should write their figure legend to accommodate both versions of the figure, and indicate their colour requirements on the Colour Work Agreement Form. This form should be completed in all instances where authors require colour, whether in print or online. Therefore, at acceptance, please download the form and return it to the Production Editor (Penny Baker, Wiley-Blackwell, John Wiley & Sons, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK. E-mail: penny.baker@wiley.com). Please note that if you require colour content your paper cannot be published until this form is received.

Figure legends. In the full-text online edition of the journal, figure legends may be truncated in abbreviated links to the full-screen version. Therefore the first 100 characters of any legend should inform the reader of key aspects of the figure.

Tables. Each table should be on a separate page, numbered and titled.

References. References to work by up to three authors in the text should be in full on first mention, e.g. (Able, Baker & Charles 1986), and subsequently abbreviated (Able et al. 1986). When different groups of authors with the same first author and date occur, they should be cited thus: (Able, Baker & Charles 1986a; Able, David & Edwards 1986b), then subsequently abbreviated to (Able et al. 1986a; Able et al. 1986b). If the number of authors exceeds three, they should always be abbreviated thus: (Carroll et al. 2007). References in the text should be listed in chronological order. References in the list should be in alphabetical order with the journal name in full. The format for papers, entire books, and chapters in books is as follows.

Carroll, S.P., Hendry A.P., Reznick, D.N. & Fox, C.W. (2007) Evolution on ecological time-scales. Functional Ecology, 21, 387-393.
Darwin, C. (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. J. Murray, London.
Travis, J. (1994) Evaluating the adaptive role of morphological plasticity. Ecological Morphology (eds P.C. Wainwright & S.M. Reilly), pp. 99-122. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Platenkamp, G.A.J. (1989) Phenotypic plasticity and genetic differentiation in the demography of the grass Anthoxanthum odoratum L. PhD thesis, University of California, Davis.

References should be cited as 'in press' only if the paper has been accepted for publication. Other references should be cited as 'unpublished' and not included in the list. Any paper cited as 'in press' must be uploaded with the manuscript as a file 'not for review' so that it can be seen by the editors and, if necessary, made available to the reviewers. Work not yet submitted for publication may be cited in the text and attributed to its author as: 'full author name, unpublished data'.

EndNote reference styles can be searched for here

Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here

Citations from World Wide Web. Citations from the World Wide Web are allowed only when alternative hard literature sources do not exist for the cited information. Authors are asked to ensure that:

fully authenticated addresses are included in the reference list, along with titles, years and authors of the sources being cited;
the sites or information sources have sufficient longevity and ease of access for others to follow up the citation;
the information is of a scientific quality at least equal to that of peer-reviewed information available in learned scientific journals.

Scientific names. Give the Latin names of each species in full (together with the authority for that name for the species studied) at first mention in the main text. If there are many species, cite a Flora or checklist that may be consulted instead of listing them in the text. Do not give authorities for species cited from published references. Use scientific names in the text (with colloquial names in parentheses, if desired).

Makers' names. Special pieces of equipment should be described such that a reader can trace specifications by writing to the manufacturer; thus: 'Data were collected using a solid-state data logger (CR21X, Campbell Scientific, Utah, USA).' Where commercially available software has been used, details of the supplier should be given in parentheses or the reference given in full in the reference list.

Units and symbols. Authors are requested to use the International System of Units (SI, Système International d'Unités) where possible for all measurements (see Quantities, Units and Symbols, 2nd edn (1975) The Royal Society, London). Note that mathematical expressions should contain symbols not abbreviations. If the paper contains many symbols, they should be defined as early in the text as possible, or within a subsection of the Materials and methods section.

Mathematical material. Mathematical expressions should be carefully represented. Suffixes and operators such as d, log, ln and exp will be set in Roman type; matrices and vectors will be set in bold type; other algebraic symbols (except Greek letters) will be set in italic. Make sure that there is no confusion between similar characters like 'l' (ell) and '1' (one). Also make sure that expressions are spaced as they should appear and, if there are several equations, they should be identified by a number in parentheses.

Numbers in text. Numbers from one to nine should be spelled out except when used with units; e.g. two eyes, but 10 stomata and 5 years.

Requests for Revisions and Processing of Accepted Papers
Revision. A revision should be submitted within 2 months of being requested unless the editor agrees to an extension. Revisions may be re-reviewed, at the discretion of the editor.

Final versions of papers. Final versions of accepted manuscript must be submitted in an electronic word processor format (such as MS Word). These files will be used by the publisher and must exactly match the accepted version. Do not use the carriage return (enter) at the end of lines within a paragraph. Turn the hyphenation option off and remove any footnotes. Where possible, figures and tables should be embedded in the text before the final version is sent to the publisher.

Editors reserve the right to modify manuscripts that do not conform to scientific, technical, stylistic or grammatical standards, and minor alterations of this nature will normally be seen by authors only at the proof stage.

Lay Summaries
The journal takes every opportunity to raise the profile of work about to be published in Functional Ecology. As part of this promotion we post lay summaries of all papers published in the journal on our website. Lay summaries are 250-350 words of text explaining the importance of the work described in the paper written in a way comprehensible to the ‘reasonably educated man-in-the-street’ i.e. written using simple language that will make the work accessible to a much wider audience than readers of Functional Ecology. The lay summary will be requested at the revision stage of the editorial process and once edited by a senior editor will be posted to the www.functionalecology.org website with a photograph relevant to the paper and then highlighted on the homepage of the website.

Pre-publication Review of Proofs. Proofs of papers accepted for publication in Functional Ecology are sent out electronically (e-proofing). The corresponding author of the accepted paper will receive an e-mail from the typesetter when their proof is available on the e-proofing site. Instructions about how to download the paper and how to return corrections are provided in the e-mail. In the corresponding author's absence, arrangements should be made for a colleague to have access to the corresponding author's e-mails in order to retrieve the proofs. The editors reserve the right to correct the proofs, using the accepted version of the manuscript, if the author's corrections are overdue. Proofs should be checked carefully, and it is the corresponding author's responsibility to ensure they are correct.

Licence to Publish Authors of accepted manuscripts will be required to grant Wiley-Blackwell an exclusive licence to publish the article on behalf of the British Ecological Society. Signing an Exclusive Licence Form is a condition of publication and papers will not be sent to the publisher for production unless a signed form is received. (Papers subject to government or Crown copyright are exempt from this requirement.) Exclusive Licence Forms may be downloaded from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/fec_caf.pdf. Please read carefully before signing: conditions are changed from time to time and may not be the same as the last time you completed one of these forms.

Early View All papers are published on Early View as soon as the authors' corrections have been made. Once your paper has been published you can post your abstract, plus a link to the article on Wiley Online Library, in your institutional repository or on your home page. Please note that, under the Exclusive Licence agreement, you are not permitted to post a PDF or a full text version of your article in your institutional repository or on your home page. The full text of your article will be freely available after 24 months.

Early View articles are complete and final. Because they are in their final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked before allocation to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at http://www.doi.org/faq.html.

OnlineOpen OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. The charge for OnlineOpen publication is $3,000 (discounted to $1,500 for papers where the first or corresponding author is a current member of the British Ecological Society, www.britishecologicalsociety.org). For the full list of terms and conditions, click here.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form.

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Offprints A PDF offprint is available to authors via an automated system integrated with Wiley-Blackwell Author Services. Authors will be directed to retrieve the final PDF file of their article online. A copy of the Publisher's Terms and Conditions for the use of the PDF file will accompany the PDF offprint and the file can only be distributed in accordance with these requirements.

Printed off-prints are no longer available for articles published in Functional Ecology.

For any enquiries regarding Functional Ecology or submitting papers to the journal then please contact the Managing Editor, Liz Baker, at managingeditor@functionalecology.org