101st ESA Annual Meeting
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
August 7 – 12, 2016
Deadline: Thursday, February 25, 2016
5:00 PM Eastern (2:00 PM Pacific)
Abstracts that are incomplete or received after the deadline will not be considered.
All ESA Annual Meeting proposal and abstract deadlines are 5:00 PM Eastern so that technical support and ESA staff assistance will be immediately available when submitters need it. If you begin your submission very close to the deadline, you are choosing to take a risk and we will not make an exception if you don’t complete your submission in time. The form automatically closes at 5:00 EST / 2:00 PST whether you have completed your submission or not. All abstracts must be submitted through the online form in order to be considered. We will not accept abstracts received by email. When you submit your abstract, you will be automatically notified of receipt by an email sent to the address that you provide. If you do not receive such a notification, please contact Program Coordinator Jennifer Riem at jennifer@esa.org to confirm that your abstract was received. You will be able to return to the abstract to edit it until the submission deadline has passed. Information on how to do so will be included in the automated email.
For more information, including abstract guidelines, refer to the sections below. You can click a link in the list in jump down to that section.
About Latebreaking Poster Abstracts
One Presentation Rule
Cancellations and No Shows
Presentation Guidelines
Important Dates
Questions?
About Latebreaking Poster Abstracts
We invite submission of abstracts for contributed poster presentations for the 101st ESA Annual Meeting. Abstracts are encouraged to address the meeting theme “Novel Ecosystems in the Anthropocene” if appropriate, but doing so is not necessary. We welcome submissions that report interdisciplinary work, address communication with broad audiences, or explore ways of teaching ecology at any level.
All abstracts accepted under this call will be presented during the Latebreaking Poster session on Friday, August 12, 8:30-10:30 AM. Posters in this session will appear in both the online and print conference programs. Poster presentations are two hours long and give presenters an opportunity for extended discussion and networking. Individually submitted contributed abstracts will be grouped together to create poster sessions organized around a common theme. Abstract authors will rank their preferred session themes as part of the abstract submission process.
Before You Begin
Please read and follow the abstract guidelines carefully. They are provided here as a guide to help you plan in advance. You can start your submission, save your progress, and then return to complete it at any time before the deadline has passed. A login and password will be automatically emailed to you when you begin an abstract submission. You may log in to view your abstract by going to: http://eco.confex.com/eco/2016/cfp.cgi.
If this is your first time submitting an abstract for an ESA meeting, we suggest reading some contributed abstracts from a previous meeting. Programs from recent meetings are available online (2015, 2014, 2013). If you are a student, we strongly encourage you to work closely with your faculty adviser as you develop your abstract.
If you encounter problems during abstract submission, email Jennifer Riem and include the abstract ID number.
Abstract Guidelines
- The abstract must primarily report on new work within the field of ecology. Reviews of previous work are not permissible for contributed presentations.
- The body of the abstract is up to 400 words, split between the two sections (up to 200 words each): Background/Question/Methods, in which the objective of the study is clearly identified and the methods are described; and Results/Conclusions, in which specific results of the study are explicitly reported and their implications for ecology are briefly discussed.
- The abstract must report specific results. The results may be preliminary but they may not be vague. Abstracts without explicitly stated results will be rejected. It is understandable that abstracts describing non-traditional work may lack quantitative data; however, it is still expected that the abstract will address some question and have a “take-home message” describing specific findings.
- Abstracts must be clear. Poorly written abstracts will be rejected.
- Abstracts must be written in English and must follow standard grammar and punctuation rules. Abstracts that do not meet this guideline will be rejected.
- For every author listed, their name, institution, and email are required information.
- Missing coauthors are a very common issue. Be sure to check to make sure everyone has been included.
- Any author can be designated as the presenting author. The presenting author’s name will appear in bold text. The presenting author is also the corresponding author. In order to receive notifications from us, it is important to make sure the correct person is indicated and that their email is entered correctly
If you are unsure if your presentation meets our guidelines, please ask us. We would rather talk to you about it in advance than send you a rejection notice in June.
Session Assignment
- During abstract submission, you will rank 3 themes to guide the grouping of your presentation into a session with similar presentations.
- Consider the themes carefully. We encourage you to browse sessions from recent conferences (2015, 2014, 2013) to see which session themes you would feel most at home in. Your colleagues who do similar work may not be ranking the topics you would think.
- The frequency with which themes are ranked determines which themes ultimately become sessions each year.
- Latebreaking Poster sessions are Friday morning, 8:30-10:30 AM. By submitting an abstract, you are indicating you will be available during this timeslot.
Editing Abstracts
Because the submission deadline is very close to our final preparations of the program, editing these abstracts is not possible after the submission deadline has passed. Proofread very carefully.
Meeting Registration
The presenting author of every accepted abstract will also need to register and will be reminded to do so in meeting correspondence. All Latebreaking Poster speakers will be notified of their acceptance in advance of the Early Bird registration deadline.
One Presentation Rule
What the rule means
- Each person is allowed to submit only one abstract where they are listed as presenting author. This rule is enforced in order to encourage broad participation.
- Coauthors are not included in this rule. A person may serve as a coauthor on any number of abstracts.
Exceptions to the rule
An author may submit an abstract for a second presentation if one of the abstracts:
- Primarily reports on ecology education or outreach.
- Primarily reports on the history of ecology as a discipline.
- Is for an Ignite presentation.
Other things you can still do that are not affected by the rule
- Serve as a session organizer and/or moderator for any session type.
- Preside over a contributed session.
- Speak in a workshop or special session.
Please contact Program Coordinator Jennifer Riem if you have questions about whether an abstract fits these criteria.
Cancellations and No Shows
Please note that the submission deadline for Latebreaking Posters falls after the May 1 cancellation deadline. Although you may still cancel an abstract submitted to this call, the $50 late cancellation penalty will apply after May 1.
The presenting author should notify ESA as soon as possible if a presentation needs to be cancelled, even if it’s on a date close to or during the Annual Meeting. To cancel, reply to any of the notification emails received about the presentation.
If you are employed by a federal agency and are facing a challenging process to acquire travel approval, rest assured that ESA will be lenient regarding penalties in such cases. In return we ask that you help us adapt by keeping us informed. The sooner we know of each cancellation, the less disruptive it will be. If by mid-April when acceptance notices are sent you are still unsure about whether your travel will be approved, please let us know.
Penalties
The deadline for cancellation without risk of penalty is May 1. Before submitting an abstract, presenters should be reasonably confident that they will attend the meeting and make the presentation as scheduled. Presenters in uncertain funding situations should cancel by May 1 or be prepared to pay the late cancellation fee.
Cancellations after May 1 (late cancellations) and failures to give scheduled presentations without any notice (no shows) are disruptive and leave gaps in the program that are a source of frustration for attendees. Therefore, ESA enforces penalties for avoidable situations that result in gaps in the meeting program. These penalties apply only to the presenting author, not to any coauthors, and for all presentation types (invited and contributed, posters and talks).
The late cancellation fee is $50 USD. The no show penalty is a one year presentation ban, regardless of presentation type (posters and talks). Any abstract with the penalized author listed as the presenting author will not be accepted for the following year’s conference.
Extenuating circumstances
We realize that sometimes sudden and unforeseen events outside of a presenter’s control prevent them from presenting as scheduled. For example, medical issues, family emergencies, unforeseen travel problems, difficulty acquiring a visa for travel to the US, and similar unforeseen situations outside of a presenter’s control. The late cancellation and no show penalties will not be applied to presenters with unavoidable reasons for not attending the conference.
Late cancellations due to a presenter’s inability to secure funding to attend, starting a new job, or other scheduling conflicts are considered avoidable and the penalties will apply.
Replacement speakers
A replacement speaker is encouraged if a speaker’s plans change after May 1. The substitute speaker does not necessarily need to be a coauthor. You do not need to notify ESA about replacement speakers since we cannot update the program.
Presentation Guidelines
- Conversation is encouraged at our poster sessions. These sessions provide an opportunity for extended discussion and networking. A cash bar will be available.
- Latebreaking Poster sessions are 8:30-10:30 AM on Friday morning. Presenting authors are required to be present for the duration of their scheduled 2-hour session. Authors should hang their posters by 8:30 AM and remove them at the end of the session.
- There is no poster size requirement except that the poster fits on the provided board. Poster boards are landscape format with dimensions 8 ft wide x 4 feet tall (2.4 m wide x 1.2 m tall). To ensure the poster will fit, presenters should design posters to be at least 2 inches (5 cm) smaller on each margin.
- Pushpins are the only method allowed for attaching the poster to the board. These will be supplied on site.
- Poster presenters may not use audio-visual equipment. Unfortunately we cannot accommodate the space and logistical requirements for such equipment.
- Poster presenters are welcome to bring handouts. Many poster presenters bring a few letter sized copies of their posters to provide as handouts. These will fit into an envelope that can be attached to the poster board using pushpins.
Important Dates
| May 5, 2016 | Abstract submission deadline. |
| June 2, 2016 | Notification of acceptance sent to presenting author. |
Questions?
Dr. Lee Frelich
Program Chair
Dept. of Forest Resources
The University of Minnesota
St. Paul, MN 55108
Phone: (612) 624-3671
E-mail: freli001@umn.edu
Jennifer Riem
Program Coordinator
Ecological Society of America
1990 M Street NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036 USA
Phone: (202) 833-8773 x 218
Email: jennifer@esa.org