Submission guidelines

General Information

Please note that the journal does not offer pre-evaluation. Therefore please directly submit your manuscript to EditorialManager at the link below. The Editors will then contact you.

When preparing your manuscript, it is important that you consider the points listed below very carefully. We also recommend using a copy of a recent article as an additional guide. For questions please contact the Editors at marinebiology@geomar.de. Manuscripts that do not fit our standard cannot be considered for publication.

For manuscripts on ocean acidification please see also the ‘Guidelines for reporting ocean acidification data’ at the end of this document.

Only articles of interest to readers of Marine Biology, presenting novel and useful information for the scientific community, and contributing to scientific progress in a particular field can be considered for publication. The potential impact and importance of the work should be described in the manuscript to ensure that the article will be read and cited.

Submitted manuscripts are first checked for English language, ethical issues, and plagiarism. Manuscripts exhibiting problems cannot be considered for publication and may be irrevocably rejected.

The submission template contains questions about the specific contribution of the manuscript to the field. The replies to these questions are of utmost importance, because the initial decision as to whether a manuscript will be sent out for review or will be rejected without review mainly depends upon the title, the abstract, and the replies to these questions. Replies that are vague will be taken as an indication that the authors are unable to condense information on these points, or that they have not considered the relationship of their work to progress in the field.

Important Notes

• Formatting as per journal instructions is essential, otherwise the manuscript will be returned without review. Carefully prepared manuscripts which are conform to the regulations of the journal have a higher chance to be considered for publication.
• Authors are advised to use blank Word files when writing their cover letter, as formatting discrepancies may be introduced when special headings/symbols (e.g. of universities) are included on the page.
• Language

  Manuscripts should conform to standard rules of English grammar and style. Either British or American spelling and punctuation may be used, but must be consistent throughout the article. Submitted manuscripts will first be checked for language, presentation and style. Manuscripts which are substandard in these respects will be returned without review. Scientists for whom English is a foreign language are strongly recommended to have their manuscript read by a native English-speaking colleague or edited by a professional editing service. Information about editing services is available on the journal web page. It is the collective responsibility of the authors to submit a linguistically correct manuscript.

• Cover letter

  When submitting a manuscript, a cover letter addressed to the Editor in Chief should be uploaded under the item ‘Cover Letter’. It will be visible for the editors, but it is not included into the manuscript file (PDF) which is made for the reviewers. The cover letter should contain a statement, that all authors have agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript, that the manuscript or parts of it have not been published elsewhere, and that the paper is not under consideration elsewhere. If the research was done in a country where none of the authors is resident, evidence that official permission to conduct the research has been given must be provided.

For questions please contact the Managing Editor at marinebiology@geomar.de

Types of Papers

• Original papers: These are the most important components of Marine Biology. They report on original research in all fields of marine biology and conform to the accepted standards of scientific quality. Interim reports and papers with inconclusive results will usually not be published. In the latter case, exceptions can be made if the inconclusiveness is a robust and important result with relation to widely debated theory.
• Reviews, concepts, and syntheses: Review papers are invited on any topic related to the focus of Marine Biology. These reviews may either summarize recently terminated research areas of wide importance, provide an up-to-date account of the present status of active research areas, or set the perspective for future research. They are not meant to be mere literature surveys. These reviews are meant to be in-depth and comprehensive efforts, and authors should have demonstrated expertise in the topic area. Very high standards of assessment with respect to quality and importance are applied to these reviews.
• Methods: Method articles may describe methods developed by the authors or a compendium of methods from the “grey” literature, if these methods deserve the attention of a wider community. Application examples demonstrating the usefulness of the method are welcome.
• Rapid communications: Rapid communications are reports of important new research results or discoveries which deserve to be published more rapidly than usual articles. The reasons for the special urgency have to be given in the cover letter. The articles have to conform to the highest priority criteria in respect to originality and importance. They can only be accepted, if no major revision of the original manuscript is needed. Rejected rapid communications cannot be submitted as regular manuscripts.
• Short notesShort notes are brief papers that contain significant observations that do not warrant full-length papers or important experimental results that are not sufficiently elaborated or developed as to justify an original paper. They may also present opinions or novel interpretation of existing ideas. Short Notes must be of considerable potential significance for a wide readership, preliminary work will not be considered. Short notes could combine the results and discussion.
• Comments and replies: Comments relate to articles in Marine Biology not older than one year. Their intention has either to be a substantial critique of the original article or the clarification of a major misunderstanding that could have been caused by the original article. The authors of the criticized articles have the right to write a reply. Comment and reply will be published together. The comment will be reviewed externally, while the reply will only be edited for clarity.
• Highlight articles:Outstanding papers of all categories may be selected as highlight articles. These articles must be exceptional in respect to the originality of the study, the importance to a diverse group of marine biologists and to the robustness of the methods. The specific importance of the article is emphasized by an accompanying comment of the responsible Editor. Highlight articles are promoted in social media.

Manuscript Submission

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Source Files

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files at every submission and revision. Failing to submit a complete set of editable source files will result in your article not being considered for review. For your manuscript text please always submit in common word processing formats such as .docx or LaTeX.

Title Page

Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

Title

The title should be concise and informative.

Author information

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
• A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
• If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published.

For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. The use of an LLM (or other AI-tool) for "AI assisted copy editing" purposes does not need to be declared. In this context, we define the term "AI assisted copy editing" as AI-assisted improvements to human-generated texts for readability and style, and to ensure that the texts are free of errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation and tone. These AI-assisted improvements may include wording and formatting changes to the texts, but do not include generative editorial work and autonomous content creation. In all cases, there must be human accountability for the final version of the text and agreement from the authors that the edits reflect their original work.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

For life science journals only (when applicable)

• Trial registration number and date of registration for prospectively registered trials
• Trial registration number and date of registration, followed by “retrospectively registered” for retrospectively registered trials

Additional Details on General Structure

The manuscript should be submitted as a word file or in LaTeX. The manuscript should be organized into Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion/Conclusion, Compliance with Ethical Standards, Acknowledgments, References, Figures (with captions) and Tables. Marine Biology does not publish footnotes or supplements, but additional data or videos may be submitted as electronic supplementary material which will be available online.

No full justification for the text should be used. Line numbers should run consecutively throughout the text, from the title page through the figure legends. Lines in tables or figures should not be numbered. Abbreviations and acronyms must be defined at first mention in the Abstract, again in the main body of the text, and also in the Figure Legends. A list of abbreviations may be included as a table, but should not appear at the beginning of the manuscript.

The Title should be meaningful and signal the importance of the study for the field. It should be descriptive and tell the reader what the paper is about. It should be general rather than restrictive to species and geographic areas. If scientific names of species are used, they must be accompanied by a higher taxonomic classification term and/or by a common name.

The Abstract should summarize the manuscript and attract the reader. It should be short and clear (150-250 words). The abstract should reflect what was done, why it was done, and what major results were obtained. It should not be written in the first person. The abstract should include the date(s) of the study and the latitude and longitude where the samples or experimental organisms were collected. It should not contain descriptions of the state of the art; such information should be limited to the introduction. No undefined abbreviations or unspecified references should be used. The abstract may decide whether a manuscript will be sent out for review; papers may be rejected due to poor or confusing abstracts.

Keywords: The keywords indicated in the submission template should also be included in the manuscript.

The Introduction should describe why the study was done and end with some testable hypotheses or clear objectives. Manuscripts which do not present a clear hypothesis are likely to be rejected without review.

Methods: All details required to repeat the work must be provided. Usage of publicly accessible data from repositories must be indicated. The respective accession information must be provided in the References.

Results: Where specific results are being presented or discussed the past tense should be used. The present tense should only be used for generalizations arising from the study results.

The Discussion should highlight the importance or significance of the study for the field and the resulting new insights.

Compliance with Ethical Standards must be included as a separate section. The authors should give information about funding and explicitly declare that they have no conflict of interest.

They should also declare that all applicable international, national and/or institutional guidelines for sampling, care and experimental use of organisms for the study have been followed and all necessary approvals have been obtained. Details about permissions should be provided; documentary evidence must be available on request.

Please do not write ''Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study” if (as usual) no human participants were involved in the study.

In the Acknowledgement grants, funds, and contributing people should be mentioned. The reviewers should be acknowledged, but please consider that Marine Biology now allows reviewers to have their names disclosed on the manuscript. You might include the name of a reviewer who has agreed to disclose her/his name into the acknowledgements when you receive the proofs (names are printed at the first page of the paper), but this is not mandatory. Write e.g. “We thank the reviewers” or “We thank X.Y. and an anonymous reviewer”

The References must be formatted in MABI style (see more details under “Citations”). Data taken/used from public Databases (e.g. PANGAEA) must be cited by accession numbers.

Figures: For ease of reviewing the figures with their captions should be included into the running text. More details are given under ‘Illustrations’ and ‘Figure Captions’ (see below). In addition the figure source files without captions must be submitted.

Tables: Tables should be numbered using Arabic numerals and have a table caption (title) on top, explaining the components of the table. All abbreviations in the table should be explained in the caption. Tables must not contain vertical lines.

Text

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
• Use italics for emphasis.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
• Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Manuscripts with mathematical content can also be submitted in LaTeX. We recommend using Springer Nature’s LaTeX template.

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Important note:

Contrary to the above text, the journal does not encourage the use of footnotes.

Additional Details:

• Use 1.5 or double-space formatting and enable line numbering. No full justification for the text should be used. Superscript must be used to denote the denominator in units, e.g. kg y-1, 24 hr time for time of day, e.g. 0700 hr.
• Use of a recent article as a guideline is recommended. Correct formatting is a prerequisite for acceptance of a manuscript. This concerns especially statistics, units, and citations/references.

Scientific style

Genus and species names should be in italics.

Statistics

Describe statistical methods in sufficient detail to allow a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. Use the same font for the same mathematical symbol regardless where it appears in the manuscript (text, equations, tables, figures, figure legends).

Give means and standard errors/standard deviations with their associated sample size in the format: X ± SE = 35.09 ± 0.07 km, n = 15. When standard deviation/error is shown in an illustration, n should be given as well.

Statistical tests use the following formats: (ANOVA, F (1,25) = 8.56, P= 0.035)

(Kruskal-Wallis test, H25 = 123.7, P= 0.001) (Chi-square test, X22 = 0.23, P = 0.57) (Paired t test, t24 = 2.33, P= 0.09)

(Linear regression, r2 = 0.94, F1,66 = 306.87, P ‹ 0.001) (Spearman rank correlation, rs = 0.60, N = 33, P ‹ 0.01) (Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, T = 7, N = 33, P ‹ 0.05) (Mann-Whitney U test, U = 44, N1 = 7, N2 = 24, P ‹ 0.02)

Please either give the exact P-value of a statistical test, or state P‹0.0xxx, if this is not possible. P=0 is not valid.

Units

Use of SI and SI-derived units is preferred. Internationally accepted units can be also be used, e.g. “min” for “minute”. The capital letter “L” must be used for liter.

Please use superscripts instead of “/” or “per …” for ratios. Exponents should also be written as superscripts.

When using a number and a unit of measure to make a qualifying adjective, put a hyphen between them, e.g. 300-μm sieve.

Please refer to the following examples.

Length, Area, Volume: pm, nm, μm, mm, cm, m, km, mm2, cm2, m2, L, mL, μL, mm3, cm3, m3 Mass: pg, ng, μg, mg, g, kg, t, Da, kDa

Time: s, min, h, d, y Temperature: °C,

Absolute quantity: pmol, nmol, μmol, mmol, mol

Concentration: pM, nM, μM, mM, M, N, %, μg L-1,

Work, Energy, Heat quantity: J, erg, cal, kcal Force: dyn, N, gw, kgw

Pressure: Pa, mmHg, atm, bar Electricity: V, W, mA, A, Hz

Photometry: if possible, avoid cd, lx, lm, cd m-2, energy or photon flux density would be preferable

Sound: Hz, kHz, mHz, Abar, dB Speed: cm s-1, m s-1, kn, rad s-1 (some speeds, e.g. sedimentation rates are better expressed per day or even year)

Radioactivity: dpm, cps, cpm, mBq, Bq, kBq, Gy, kGy, mSv, Sv, R, kR Rotation: ×g, cycle Use the symbols ‹ and › to stand for less than and more than.

Also note that salinity has no units and should be presented as: salinity of X or salinity X.

Organisms

Genus and species name must be in italics. It is recommended that the species names appear in full at the beginning of each section of the manuscript and when they appear at the beginning of a sentence. In other places use the contraction e.g. A. islandica for Arctica islandica. Do not abbreviate genus names if several genera with the same initials can lead to confusion, or when only the genus name is used. Genus sp. and Genus spp. should only be used when speciation to species level was generally sought, but not completely reached and several species should be treated together, respectively.

The species author may follow the first use of the study species name in either the Abstract or the Materials and Methods. If it is included, the reference to the original description must appear in the References section.

Common names can be used in addition to the scientific names, they are useful especially in the title. Common names such as “water fleas” for cladocerans, or common names that might be misleading must be avoided. E.g.: Sandfish is a common name of: Gonorynchus, a genus of fish, Scincus scincus, a skink, and Holothuria scabra, a sea cucumber. It should only be used for the fish.

Only use the words ‘animal’ and ‘plant’ in the most general sense. When referring to the individual organisms used in a study, use the most specific term possible such as the species name (in full or contracted), the common name such as ‘mud shrimp’ for Upogebia pugettensis, or ‘individuals’ where appropriate.

When describing the general attributes of a species use a singular verb. When referring to the multiple organisms belonging to the species used in a study, use a plural verb.

Seasons

When describing the seasonal timing of events, be aware that fall and winter occur at different times of the year in the northern and southern hemispheres. It is best to specify the months rather than just the seasons.

Study Locations

When writing the names of states in the USA do not use the postal abbreviation but write them in full− thus Virginia not VA.

If a map is used to show study locations, it must have a scale, an arrow indicating due north or a compass rose and a border with the latitude/longitude marked on it. It should show all geographical locations mentioned in the study. The source of the map must be given in the caption of the figure.

Guidelines for reporting ocean acidification data in scientific journals

A document prepared in the framework of the data management activity of the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre of the International Atomic Energy Agency can be found at the following link:

Guidelines for reporting ocean acidification data in scientific journals

References

Citation

Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses. Some examples:

• Negotiation research spans many disciplines (Thompson 1990).
• This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman (1996).
• This effect has been widely studied (Abbott 1991; Barakat et al. 1995a, b; Kelso and Smith 1998; Medvec et al. 1999, 2000).

Reference list

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work. Please alphabetize according to the following rules: 1) For one author, by name of author, then chronologically; 2) For two authors, by name of author, then name of coauthor, then chronologically; 3) For more than two authors, by name of first author, then chronologically.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

• Journal article

  Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

  Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists will also be accepted:

  Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

• Article by DOI

  Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086

• Book

  South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London

• Book chapter

  Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 230-257

• Online document

  Cartwright J (2007) Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 26 June 2007

• Dissertation

  Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

ISSN LTWA

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.

Additional Remarks on Citation

When citing references in the text, put them in parentheses in chronological order with the earliest first. Separate them with semicolons. Do not put a comma between the author(s) and date.

Examples:

• (Thompson 1990; Abbott et al. 2005; Elliott and Green 2009)
• Same author, multiple years. E.g. (Brown 1997, 2000, 2005)
• Same author, same year. E.g. (Brown 2005a, b)
• Two authors (Brown and Smith 2007; Abbott and Green 2009)
• Multiple authors (Zar et al. 1998; Brown et al. 2008)
• As part of a sentence, e.g. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman (1996)
• Abbreviate Personal Communications to (pers comm
• Abbreviate Unpublished data to (unpubl data)

Additional Remarks on References

References should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work.

When there are more than two references with the same first author, the references should be arranged so that the single-authored papers come first in chronological order with the earliest first, then the two-authored papers in alphabetical order by second author, then the multi-authored papers in chronological order with the earliest first.

Journal articles: Journal names must be abbreviated without punctuation. DOIs should be checked with the doi system website, to make sure that the cite is correct.

Online documents: Websites should only be cited if absolutely essential because they will change with time.

Data from a database must be cited in the references by using a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

Conference Proceedings should not be cited. Every cited printed work should be publicly accessible by ISBN or ISSN number.

When revising your manuscript please examine the validity of your journal references with the 'Automatic Reference Checking' module of the Editorial Manager.

The results of the reference checking are provided by clicking the corresponding link provided in your “Main Menu” in the Editorial Manager, as well as in the PDF file containing your manuscript. If "not validated" is displayed for a reference, it should be checked carefully and corrected where appropriate, as in most cases typos, wrong journals, issues or pages preclude its validation.

Statements & Declarations

The following statements must be included in your submitted manuscript under the heading 'Statements and Declarations'. This should be placed after the References section. Please note that submissions that do not include required statements will be returned as incomplete.

Funding

Please describe any sources of funding that have supported the work. The statement should include details of any grants received (please give the name of the funding agency and grant number).

Example statements:

“This work was supported by […] (Grant numbers […] and […]). Author A.B. has received research support from Company A.”

“The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.”

Competing Interests

Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work.

Example statements:

“Financial interests: Author A and B declare they have no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M. Dr. C has received speaker honorarium and research funding from Company M and Company N. Author D has received travel support from Company O. Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M and Company N.”

“The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.”

Please refer to the “Competing Interests” section below for more information on how to complete these sections.

Author Contributions

Authors are encouraged to include a statement that specifies the contribution of every author to the research and preparation of the manuscript.

Example statement:

“All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

Please refer to the “Authorship Principles ” section below for more information on how to complete this section.

Data Availability

All original research must include a Data Availability Statement. Data Availability Statements should provide information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found. Statements should include, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. When it is not possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Example statements:

“The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT LINK TO DATASETS]”

“The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to [REASON(S) WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.].”

Please refer to the “Research Data Policy and Data Availability” section below for more information on how to complete this section.

In addition to the above, manuscripts that report the results of studies involving humans and/or animals should include the following declarations:

Ethics approval

Authors of research involving human or animal subjects should include a statement that confirms that the study was approved (or granted exemption) by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee and reference number, if available). For research involving animals, their data or biological material, authors should supply detailed information on the ethical treatment of their animals in their submission. If a study was granted exemption or did not require ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

“This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of University B (Date.../No....).”

“This is an observational study. The XYZ Research Ethics Committee has confirmed that no ethical approval is required.”

For detailed information on relevant ethical standards and criteria, please refer to the sections on “Research involving human participants, their data or biological material”, “Research involving animals, their data or biological material”.

Consent to participate

For all research involving human subjects, freely-given, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

Example statement:

“Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.”

“Written informed consent was obtained from the parents.”

Please refer to the section on “Informed Consent” for additional help with completing this information.

Consent to publish

Individuals may consent to participate in a study, but object to having their data published in a journal article. If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. This is in particular applicable to case studies. A statement confirming that consent to publish has been received from all participants should appear in the manuscript.

Example statement:

“The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication of the images in Figure(s) 1a, 1b and 1c.”

Please refer to the section on “Informed Consent” for additional help with completing this information.

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MS Office files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color Art

• Color art is free of charge for print and online publication.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB.

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, "A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices [Supplementary Information (SI)] should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted within the body of the text. Only if the file size of the manuscript causes problems in uploading it, the large figures should be submitted separately from the text.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For large-sized journals the figures should be 84 mm (for double-column text areas), or 174 mm (for single-column text areas) wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For small-sized journals, the figures should be 119 mm wide and not higher than 195 mm.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (color-blind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Important note:

• In addition to the submission of the figure source files without captions (as mentioned above), the figures with their captions should also be included into the running text.

Additonal Details on Illustrations

The illustrations are a very important part of the article. They must be prepared very carefully and be of good quality. Note that EXCEL is not a drawing program and figures generated in this program frequently require editing prior to inclusion in manuscripts. Legend material should be included on the panels, not hanging off to the side or as titles or labels at the top or bottom of the figures. Legend material can also be included in the figure legend if it does not fit on the panel(s). Manuscripts containing poor quality figures will not be considered for publication. The figures should be as simple as possible and all details must be clearly visible when the figures are reduced in size. Data should be provided in figures OR in tables. Data must not appear twice (Fig and Table).

Any information that is not absolutely necessary for understanding the article should be provided as numbered appendices in the electronic supplementary material (ESM).

For ease of reviewing the figures with their captions (each caption placed below the respective figure) should be included into the running text at an appropriate place. The source files (e.g. EPS, TIFF; JPG, each figure in its own file) required for later production (if), must be submitted as separate files without captions.

To avoid confusion, no extra list of figure captions should be submitted.

Figures must be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text. The illustrations should be self- explanatory, i.e. with their captions they should be able to stand on their own without requiring further information from the main body of the text.

If a figure contains multiple panels, all panels should be on one page. They should be of the same size and arranged properly. Axes titles must only be repeated on each panel when they are different. The same style should be used for all similar illustrations so that their appearance is consistent.

The same non serif font (e.g. ARIAL) must be used for lettering in all figures. All lines must be sufficiently thick to reproduce well and all lines, lettering, symbols and markings must be sufficiently large to be easily legible when reduced in size and must be in proportion to the rest of the drawing. If various degrees of grey shading are used, ensure that they are varied enough to differentiate among them or use patterns. Grid lines and boxes around symbol definitions should be avoided. Colors could be used if necessary. Marine Biology does not charge for color figures in the online or printed version of the journal; however, the Editors may refuse color prints if the use of color is not justified.

The source must be given for maps, photographs, and other materials. Scale bars should be placed on photographs and maps. Maps must have an arrow indicating due north or a compass rose and a border with the latitude/longitude marked on it. Please see also the chapter “Artwork and Illustration Guidelines” in the “Instructions for Authors” for examples and further details.

Figure Captions

• The Figure captions should be brief (“telegraphic style”), but contain all details necessary for understanding the figure without reading the text. They should not contain methodical details or results. All terms, abbreviations, and symbols must be explained in the caption and correspond with those in the text.
• It is not mandatory anymore for captions to be provided on a separate page. The manuscript file can comprise the figures with the captions (each caption placed below the respective figure). This makes it easier for reviewers. All figures (with captions) should be placed at an appropriate place within the running text. Source files of figures which need to be submitted in addition must not contain captions. The manuscript should not contain a separate list of figure captions.
• The source files of the figures (JPG, EPS, TIFF, etc) without captions should be provided separately as single files. They are needed for later production (provided acceptance).

Supplementary Information (SI)

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Before submitting research datasets as Supplementary Information, authors should read the journal’s Research data policy. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

Submission

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.
• High resolution (streamable quality) videos can be submitted up to a maximum of 25GB; low resolution videos should not be larger than 5GB.

Audio, Video, and Animations

• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
• Maximum file size: 25 GB for high resolution files; 5 GB for low resolution files
• Minimum video duration: 1 sec
• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.

Captions

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files

• Supplementary Information (SI) will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Statements

This journal follows Springer Nature research data policy. Sharing of all relevant research data is strongly encouraged and authors must add a Data Availability Statement to original research articles.

Research data includes a wide range of types, including spreadsheets, images, textual extracts, archival documents, video or audio, interview notes or any specialist formats generated during research.

Data availability statements

All original research must include a data availability statement. This statement should explain how to access data supporting the results and analysis in the article, including links/citations to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Please see our full policy here.

If it is not possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, this statement should describe how data can be accessed and any conditions for reuse. Participant consent should be obtained and documented prior to data collection. See our guidance on sensitive data for more information.

When creating a data availability statement, authors are encouraged to consider the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article.

Further guidance on writing a data availability statement, including examples, is available at:

Data availability statements

Data repositories

Authors are strongly encouraged to deposit their supporting data in a publicly available repository. Sharing your data in a repository promotes the integrity, discovery and reuse of your research, making it easier for the research community to build on and credit your work.

See our data repository guidance for information on finding a suitable repository.

We recommend the use of discipline-specific repositories where available. For a number of data types, submission to specific public repositories is mandatory.

See our list of mandated data types.

The journal encourages making research data available under open licences that permit reuse. The journal does not enforce use of particular licences in third party repositories. You should ensure you have necessary rights to share any data that you deposit in a repository.

Data citation

The journal recommends that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely. This includes data the authors are sharing alongside their publication and any secondary data the authors have reused. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI), should be included in the reference list using the minimum information recommended by DataCite (Dataset Creator, Dataset Title, Publisher [repository], Publication Year, Identifier [e.g. DOI, Handle, Accession or ARK]) and follow journal style.

See our further guidance on citing datasets.

Research data and peer review

If the journal that you are submitting to uses double-anonymous peer review and you are providing reviewers with access to your data (for example via a repository link, supplementary information or data on request), it is strongly suggested that the authorship in the data is also anonymised. There are data repositories that can assist with this and/or will create a link to mask the authorship of your data.

Support with research data policy

Authors who need help understanding our data sharing policy, finding a suitable data repository, or organising and sharing research data can consult our Research Data Helpdesk for guidance.

See our FAQ page for more information on Springer Nature's research data policy.

Additional Details on Archiving of Data

Data storage in a publicly accessible data library is highly recommended, for DNA sequence information it is obligatory. Please declare in your manuscript whether (and where) your data are publicly accessible or not.

DNA sequence information must be deposited in GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) and accession numbers must be included in the manuscript such that the raw data can be accessed and compared against the presented data. For frequency-based data (microsatellites predominantly) a table of allele frequencies by population should be included (suitable for electronic supplementary material).

Phylogenetic information might be stored in TreeBASE, this repository accepts all kinds of phylogenetic data (e.g., trees of species, trees of populations, trees of genes).

Other data can be deposited in the data library PANGAEA (http://www.pangaea.de/). Data are archived by an editor in standard formats, in machine readable form, and are available with Open Access. After processing, the author receives an identifier (DOI) link to the supplement for proof-reading. Data can be referenced in the publication to facilitate linking between the journal article and the data. Send raw data with a description to info@pangaea.de. PANGAEA can be used free of charge.

For Tracking data (telemetry devices on animals) specific databases exist, such as Movebank or Seaturtle.org. Data can be stored with the option to apply different levels of access to internal and external users.

The Dryad Digital Repository DRYAD (http://datadryad.org/) provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types. Data storage is charged, but researchers from economically developing countries may submit data at no charge.

Other publicly accessible data libraries are welcome as well. A special archive for isotope data (IsoBank) is currently under construction.

If unpublished data sources are cited in the text or if a manuscript contains only highly derived data without basal data (e.g. diversity indices without species abundances) archiving of basal data might be requested by the Editor. In the latter case, electronic supplements might be used as an alternative to data archives.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
• Concurrent or secondary publication is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. Examples include: translations or a manuscript that is intended for a different group of readers.
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript (e.g. dual use of research). Examples include creation of harmful consequences of biological agents or toxins, disruption of immunity of vaccines, unusual hazards in the use of chemicals, weaponization of research/technology (amongst others).
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

*All of the above are guidelines and authors need to make sure to respect third parties rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

  - an erratum/correction may be placed with the article

  - an expression of concern may be placed with the article

  - or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

• The author’s institution may be informed
• A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Fundamental errors

Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.

Suggesting / excluding reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

Authorship principles

These guidelines describe authorship principles and good authorship practices to which prospective authors should adhere to.

Authorship clarified

The Journal and Publisher assume all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

The Publisher does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship. It is recommended that authors adhere to the guidelines for authorship that are applicable in their specific research field. In absence of specific guidelines it is recommended to adhere to the following guidelines*:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work;

2) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;

3) approved the version to be published; and

4) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

* Based on/adapted from:

ICMJE, Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors,

Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication, McNutt at all, PNAS February 27, 2018

Disclosures and declarations

All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

The decision whether such information should be included is not only dependent on the scope of the journal, but also the scope of the article. Work submitted for publication may have implications for public health or general welfare and in those cases it is the responsibility of all authors to include the appropriate disclosures and declarations.

Data transparency

All authors are requested to make sure that all data and materials as well as software application or custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards. Please note that journals may have individual policies on (sharing) research data in concordance with disciplinary norms and expectations.

Role of the Corresponding Author

One author is assigned as Corresponding Author and acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.

The Corresponding Author is responsible for the following requirements:

• ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors;
• managing all communication between the Journal and all co-authors, before and after publication;*
• providing transparency on re-use of material and mention any unpublished material (for example manuscripts in press) included in the manuscript in a cover letter to the Editor;
• making sure disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate (see above).

* The requirement of managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors during submission and proofing may be delegated to a Contact or Submitting Author. In this case please make sure the Corresponding Author is clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Author contributions

In absence of specific instructions and in research fields where it is possible to describe discrete efforts, the Publisher recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the separate title page.

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

• Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],….

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis, it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Please note that author names will be published exactly as they appear on the accepted submission!

Please make sure that the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Please note that journals may have individual policies on adding and/or deleting authors during revision stage.

Author identification

Authors are recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration or acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process.

Deceased or incapacitated authors

For cases in which a co-author dies or is incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Journal as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Handling Editors and reviewers’ reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

• Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
• Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals
• Informed consent

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. single or double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline. Before submitting your article check the instructions following this section carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned guidelines.

Competing Interests

Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

Editorial Board Members and Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors. Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list we recommend they declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Editor or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration.

Interests that should be considered and disclosed but are not limited to the following:

Funding: Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).

Financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies (including holdings of spouse and/or children) that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication of this manuscript.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so one possible practical guideline is the following: "Any undeclared financial interest that could embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the work was published."

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are requested to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could impart bias on the work submitted for publication such as professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs (amongst others). Examples include, but are not limited to: position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations; and so forth.

Primary research articles require a disclosure statement. Review articles present an expert synthesis of evidence and may be treated as an authoritative work on a subject. Review articles therefore require a disclosure statement. Other article types such as editorials, book reviews, comments (amongst others) may, dependent on their content, require a disclosure statement. If you are unclear whether your article type requires a disclosure statement, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Please note that, in addition to the above requirements, funding information (given that funding is a potential competing interest (as mentioned above)) needs to be disclosed upon submission of the manuscript in the peer review system. This information will automatically be added to the Record of CrossMark, however it is not added to the manuscript itself. Under ‘summary of requirements’ (see below) funding information should be included in the ‘Declarations’ section.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Funding’ and/or ‘Competing interests’. Other declarations include Ethics approval, Consent, Data, Material and/or Code availability and Authors’ contribution statements.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

When all authors have the same (or no) conflicts and/or funding it is sufficient to use one blanket statement.

Examples of statements to be used when funding has been received:

• Partial financial support was received from [...]
• The research leading to these results received funding from […] under Grant Agreement No[…].
• This study was funded by […]
• This work was supported by […] (Grant numbers […] and […]

Examples of statements to be used when there is no funding:

• The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.
• No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
• No funding was received for conducting this study.
• No funds, grants, or other support was received.

Examples of statements to be used when there are interests to declare:

• Financial interests: Author A has received research support from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company W and owns stock in Company X. Author C is consultant to company Y.

  Non-financial interests: Author C is an unpaid member of committee Z.

• Financial interests: The authors declare they have no financial interests.

  Non-financial interests: Author A is on the board of directors of Y and receives no compensation as member of the board of directors.

• Financial interests: Author A received a speaking fee from Y for Z. Author B receives a salary from association X. X where s/he is the Executive Director.

  Non-financial interests: none.

• Financial interests: Author A and B declare they have no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M and Company N. Dr. C has received speaker honorarium and research funding from Company M and Company O. Author D has received travel support from Company O.

  Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M, Company N and Company O.

Examples of statements to be used when authors have nothing to declare:

• The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
• The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
• All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
• The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript. See also Authorship Principles. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject submissions that do not meet the guidelines described in this section.

Research involving human participants, their data or biological material

Ethics approval

When reporting a study that involved human participants, their data or biological material, authors should include a statement that confirms that the study was approved (or granted exemption) by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee) and certify that the study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration or comparable standards, the authors must explain the reasons for their approach, and demonstrate that an independent ethics committee or institutional review board explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. If a study was granted exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the reasons for the exemption).

Retrospective ethics approval

If a study has not been granted ethics committee approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.

Ethics approval for retrospective studies

Although retrospective studies are conducted on already available data or biological material (for which formal consent may not be needed or is difficult to obtain) ethics approval may be required dependent on the law and the national ethical guidelines of a country. Authors should check with their institution to make sure they are complying with the specific requirements of their country.

Ethics approval for case studies

Case reports require ethics approval. Most institutions will have specific policies on this subject. Authors should check with their institution to make sure they are complying with the specific requirements of their institution and seek ethics approval where needed. Authors should be aware to secure informed consent from the individual (or parent or guardian if the participant is a minor or incapable) See also section on Informed Consent.

Cell lines

If human cells are used, authors must declare in the manuscript: what cell lines were used by describing the source of the cell line, including when and from where it was obtained, whether the cell line has recently been authenticated and by what method. If cells were bought from a life science company the following need to be given in the manuscript: name of company (that provided the cells), cell type, number of cell line, and batch of cells.

It is recommended that authors check the NCBI database for misidentification and contamination of human cell lines. This step will alert authors to possible problems with the cell line and may save considerable time and effort.

Further information is available from the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC).

Authors should include a statement that confirms that an institutional or independent ethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee) approved the study and that informed consent was obtained from the donor or next of kin.

Research Resource Identifiers (RRID)

Research Resource Identifiers (RRID) are persistent unique identifiers (effectively similar to a DOI) for research resources. This journal encourages authors to adopt RRIDs when reporting key biological resources (antibodies, cell lines, model organisms and tools) in their manuscripts.

Examples:

Organism: Filip1^{tm1a(KOMP)Wtsi} RRID:MMRRC_055641-UCD

Cell Line: RST307 cell line RRID:CVCL_C321

Antibody: Luciferase antibody DSHB Cat# LUC-3, RRID:AB_2722109

Plasmid: mRuby3 plasmid RRID:Addgene_104005

Software: ImageJ Version 1.2.4 RRID:SCR_003070

RRIDs are provided by the Resource Identification Portal. Many commonly used research resources already have designated RRIDs. The portal also provides authors links so that they can quickly register a new resource and obtain an RRID.

Clinical Trial Registration

The World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a clinical trial is "any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes". The WHO defines health interventions as “A health intervention is an act performed for, with or on behalf of a person or population whose purpose is to assess, improve, maintain, promote or modify health, functioning or health conditions” and a health-related outcome is generally defined as a change in the health of a person or population as a result of an intervention.

To ensure the integrity of the reporting of patient-centered trials, authors must register prospective clinical trials (phase II to IV trials) in suitable publicly available repositories. For example www.clinicaltrials.gov or any of the primary registries that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The trial registration number (TRN) and date of registration should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

For clinical trials that have not been registered prospectively, authors are encouraged to register retrospectively to ensure the complete publication of all results. The trial registration number (TRN), date of registration and the words 'retrospectively registered’ should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

Standards of reporting

Springer Nature advocates complete and transparent reporting of biomedical and biological research and research with biological applications. Authors are recommended to adhere to the minimum reporting guidelines hosted by the EQUATOR Network when preparing their manuscript.

Exact requirements may vary depending on the journal; please refer to the journal’s Instructions for Authors.

Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including:

Randomised trials (CONSORT) and Study protocols (SPIRIT)

Observational studies (STROBE)

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) and protocols (Prisma-P)

Diagnostic/prognostic studies (STARD) and (TRIPOD)

Case reports (CARE)

Clinical practice guidelines (AGREE) and (RIGHT)

Qualitative research (SRQR) and (COREQ)

Animal pre-clinical studies (ARRIVE)

Quality improvement studies (SQUIRE)

Economic evaluations (CHEERS)

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Ethics approval’.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

Examples of statements to be used when ethics approval has been obtained:

• All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Bioethics Committee of the Medical University of A (No. ...).

• This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of University B (Date.../No. ...).

• Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of University C. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

• The questionnaire and methodology for this study was approved by the Human Research Ethics committee of the University of D (Ethics approval number: ...).

Examples of statements to be used for a retrospective study:

• Ethical approval was waived by the local Ethics Committee of University A in view of the retrospective nature of the study and all the procedures being performed were part of the routine care.

• This research study was conducted retrospectively from data obtained for clinical purposes. We consulted extensively with the IRB of XYZ who determined that our study did not need ethical approval. An IRB official waiver of ethical approval was granted from the IRB of XYZ.

• This retrospective chart review study involving human participants was in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The Human Investigation Committee (IRB) of University B approved this study.

Examples of statements to be used when no ethical approval is required/exemption granted:

• This is an observational study. The XYZ Research Ethics Committee has confirmed that no ethical approval is required.

• The data reproduced from Article X utilized human tissue that was procured via our Biobank AB, which provides de-identified samples. This study was reviewed and deemed exempt by our XYZ Institutional Review Board. The BioBank protocols are in accordance with the ethical standards of our institution and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript. See also Authorship Principles. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject submissions that do not meet the guidelines described in this section.

Research involving animals, their data or biological material

The welfare of animals (vertebrate and higher invertebrate) used for research, education and testing must be respected. Authors should supply detailed information on the ethical treatment of their animals in their submission. For that purpose they may use the ARRIVE checklist which is designed to be used when submitting manuscripts describing animal research.

For studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also document informed consent from the client or owner and adherence to a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care.

Authors are recommended to comply with:

• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and consult the IUCN red list index of threatened species.

• Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

When reporting results authors should indicate:

• … that the studies have been approved by a research ethics committee at the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted. Please provide the name of ethics committee and relevant permit number;

• … whether the legal requirements or guidelines in the country and/or state or province for the care and use of animals have been followed.

Researchers from countries without any legal requirements or guidelines voluntarily should refer to the following sites for guidance:

– The Basel Declaration describes fundamental principles of using animals in biomedical research

– The International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) provides ethical guidelines for researchers as well as editors and reviewers

– The Association for the study of Animal Behaviour describes ethical guidelines for the treatment of animals in research and teaching

– The International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics provide guidelines for authors on animal ethics and welfare

Researchers may wish to consult the most recent (ethical) guidelines available from relevant taxon-oriented professional societies.

If a study was granted exemption or did not require ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Ethics approval’.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

Examples of statements to be used when ethics approval has been obtained:

• All procedures involving animals were in compliance with the European Community Council Directive of 24 November 1986, and ethical approval was granted by the Kocaeli University Ethics Committee (No. 29 12 2014, Kocaeli, Turkey).

• All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the ARVO Statement for Use of Animals in Ophthalmic Vision and Research. The ethical principles established by the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Publications No. 8523, revised 2011) were followed. The research protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee on Animal Use (Protocol No. 06174/14) of FCAV/Unesp, Jaboticabal.

• This study involved a questionnaire-based survey of farmers as well as blood sampling from their animals. The study protocol was assessed and approved by Haramaya University, research and extension office. Participants provided their verbal informed consent for animal blood sampling as well as for the related survey questions. Collection of blood samples was carried out by veterinarians adhering to the regulations and guidelines on animal husbandry and welfare.

• All brown bear captures and handling were approved by the Ethical Committee on Animal Experiments, Uppsala, Sweden (Application C18/15) and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in compliance with Swedish laws and regulations.

• The ethics governing the use and conduct of experiments on animals were strictly observed, and the experimental protocol was approved by the University of Maiduguri Senate committee on Medical Research ethics. Proper permit and consent were obtained from the Maiduguri abattoir management, before the faecal samples of the cattle and camels slaughtered in this abattoir were used for this experiment.

Examples of statements to be used when no ethical approval is required/exemption granted:

• No approval of research ethics committees was required to accomplish the goals of this study because experimental work was conducted with an unregulated invertebrate species.

• As the trappings of small mammals were conducted as part of regular pest control measures in accordance with the NATO Standardized Agreement 2048 "Deployment Pest and Vector Surveillance and Control ", no approval by an ethics committee was required.

• All experiments have been conducted as per the guidelines of the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee, Department of Zoology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. However, the insect species used in this study is reared for commercial production of raw silk materials, as a part of agro-based industry. Therefore, use of this animal in research does not require ethical clearance. We have obtained permission from the office of Research officer sericulture, Baripada, Orissa, India for the provision of infrastructure and support for rearing of silkworm both in indoor and outdoor conditions related to our study to promote sericulture practices.

Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript. See also Authorship Principles. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject submissions that do not meet the guidelines described in this section.

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Open Choice

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