Call for Latebreaking Poster Abstracts

95^th ESA Annual Meeting
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
August 1 - 6, 2010

Submission Deadline: May 13, 2010

Authors have one final chance to submit an abstract for the ESA Annual Meeting! All abstracts accepted under this invitation will be presented during a "Latebreaking" poster session on Friday, August 6, from 8:30-10:30 AM. Abstract titles for posters in this session will be printed in the official conference program and the abstracts will appear on the online program.

Abstracts that address the meeting theme, “Global Warming: The legacy of our past, the challenge for our future”, are especially encouraged, but submissions may address any aspect of ecology and its applications. We also welcome submissions reporting interdisciplinary work, that address communication with broad audiences, or that explore ways of teaching ecology at any level. Please adhere to the following guidelines in preparing and submitting your abstract.

A. One Presentation Rule
B. Guidelines for All Poster Presentations
C. Evaluation and Acceptance of Abstracts
D. Abstract Submission
E. Corrections
F. Cancellations
G. Penalties and Fees for Cancellations/No-Shows
H. Begin Submission Process

A. One Presentation Rule

• To encourage broad participation, each person is allowed to present only one contributed oral, poster, symposium, or organized oral session presentation.
• A person may be a co-author on several abstracts.
• Authors or presenters may also serve as session presiders or as organizers of symposia, organized oral sessions, workshops, or special sessions.
• Exception: An author may submit an abstract for a second presentation ONLY if the second abstract is directly related to ecology education or scientific outreach.  Please contact Program Coordinator Jennifer Riem (Jennifer@esa.org) if you have questions about an abstract fitting these criteria.  

B. Guidelines for all Poster Presentations

• Poster sessions provide an opportunity for discussion in a relaxed setting. Presenting authors are required to be present for this scheduled 2 hour period when their poster is being displayed.
• Poster boards are approximately 2.4 m wide x 1.2 m tall (8 ft wide x 4 feet tall) and there will be one poster per poster board.  A poster does not have to take up the maximum amount of space provided.  Since these dimensions are not precise, presenters should design posters to be at least 5 cm (2 inches) smaller on each margin.  Pushpins will be supplied, and are the only method for attaching the poster to the board.
• Poster presenters may not use audio-visual equipment but are welcome to bring along handouts associated with their presentation.  

C. Evaluation and Acceptance of Abstracts

• Accuracy of the abstract is the responsibility of the author(s). Abstracts will be rejected if they do not comply precisely with the guidelines on content and format listed here and on the submission website.
• Abstracts must be based primarily on NEW, unpublished material. Reviews of past work are generally not permissible outside of symposia or other special sessions.
• Abstracts may be submitted before all analyses and conclusions are in their final form, but authors MUST report at least preliminary results. Abstracts based primarily on future work will be REJECTED. Vague statements such as “results will be discussed” will result in abstract rejection.
• Abstracts must use standard English, and follow English syntax, grammar, and punctuation rules. Poorly written abstracts will be REJECTED.  

D. Abstract Submission
Select the link at the bottom of this page to begin the submission process. Indicating Preferences for Session Assignment:

• Poster presentations will be grouped by theme.  We invite you to indicate your preferences among likely session themes.
• We have listed likely session themes, based on submissions and sessions from prior meetings, in ‘pull-down’ lists under five categories: 1) ecological concepts and processes; 2) ecosystem or habitat; 3) ecological applications, tools, and techniques; 4) subdiscipline; and 5) taxonomic or functional group. 
• Please choose THREE of these themes, in order of your preference, to guide our grouping of papers into sessions.  Each of your preferred themes may be selected from any of the 5 categories. You may, for any of the 3 choices, elect to enter a theme not on the lists provided; to do so, check the ‘other’ box, and enter a brief term in the space provided.  Please use this option only if you are unable to find an appropriate theme in the lists provided.
• PLEASE NOTE that these themes are designed to identify similarities among papers for purposes of grouping, not as keywords for searching the program; highly specific terms (e.g., species names, place-names, particular techniques, etc.) are generally not useful here.  Program users can search the full text of your title and abstract.

Submitting Abstract and Author Information:
Follow the on-line instructions to submit your abstract.  Follow these general guidelines when entering your abstract:

• Abstracts may be no longer than 400 words in total and must include information on both a)Background/Question/Methods, using up to 200 words and b)Results/Conclusions, using up to 200 words. We encourage each contributor to identify the objective of the study in the first of these, and be explicit about the results of the study in the second of these. Abstracts without explicitly stated results will not be accepted.
• Exception: If you are presenting a non-traditional research paper, it is still expected that your talk would address some question. It is understandable that these abstracts would lack specific data in the “Results/Conclusions” section; however, every talk should have a “take-home message.”
• When entering your title, capitalize the first word, proper nouns, and the first word following a colon. The title is limited to 255 characters (about 15 words). Do not type the title in all capital letters. Place a comma before the word "and" in a series. Do not end your title with punctuation.        

Example: Fecal glucorticoids: A non-invasive method for measuring stress in river otters, brown bears, and red deer

• For each author, enter the full first name, the first letter of the middle name, and the full last name.  Do not add punctuation after any of the names. 
• Only the first line of text in an author’s affiliation will appear in the official conference program; this should be the name of your institution.  Do NOT enter department name on the first line of an author’s affiliation.  Do not end a line with any type of punctuation.
• Symbols, special characters, and fonts are available from a pull-down menu of codes on the abstract submission form. Enter them by selecting from this menu.
• Notification of Receipt: You will be notified of receipt electronically using the e-mail address entered on the submission form. If you enter an incorrect address, you will NOT receive notification. Your abstract will be assigned an Abstract ID Number. Please do not forget this ID number as it will be required for future communications.  You can edit your abstract until the abstract deadline, May 13, 2010. 
• Notification of Acceptance: You will be notified of acceptance or rejection of your abstract via e-mail by June 10, 2010.

If you encounter problems during abstract submission, contact Jennifer Riem.
E. Making Corrections

• You may view your abstract by going to: http://eco.confex.com/eco/2010/cfp.cgi and entering your Abstract ID Number received at the time of submission.
• Edits can be made directly to the abstract until the abstract deadline, May 13, 2010. Edits are not possible after this date.
• You can also view your session day, time, and room assignment when the schedule has been finalized. We expect this information to be available in June.

F. Cancellations

• The deadline for cancellation without penalty is May 1, 2010. Since the cancellation deadline is BEFORE the submission deadline for latebreaking poster abstracts, you must be confident in your attendance at the Friday morning poster session at the Annual Meeting before submitting your abstract for review.
• If circumstances prevent attendance for a scheduled presentation, the author should find another person to make the presentation.
• If cancellation is unavoidable, the author should notify Jennifer Riem (jennifer@esa.org)  as soon as possible.   

G. Penalties and Fees for Cancellations/No-Shows
Failures to give scheduled presentations are disruptive and leave costly gaps in the program that are distracting to all attendees. Therefore, ESA has adopted the following cancellation policy and fee schedule (all values are in US dollars):

• Each person who submits an abstract, whether for an oral paper or a poster, MUST also provide payment information (credit card or check) to ESA. No abstract submission will be accepted for presentation unless this payment information is received by ESA.
• Payment information will be used to process late cancellation/no show fees ONLY if the presenter either: 1) fails to submit written notification of abstract withdrawal to Aleta Wiley prior to the May 1, 2010 cancellation deadline or, 2) fails to show up to present his/her poster and does not arrange for a co-author or other alternate person to present the research. All fees will be processed after August 8, 2010.
• $40.00 US Dollars will be charged for late cancellation/no show poster presentations.
• Presenters who cancel after May 15, 2010 will not be allowed to give a presentation at the 2011 ESA Meeting.
• Presenters who fail to appear for a scheduled presentation will not be allowed to give a presentation at the 2011 and 2012 ESA Meetings.
• Exceptions: Cancellation fees and penalties may be waived if special circumstances apply. Consideration will be case by case by contacting Jennifer Riem. While it is imperative that you notify ESA of your cancellation as soon as possible, decisions regarding waiver requests will not be made until after the annual meeting.  

H. Begin Submission Process
To begin the submission process, please click here.
  For further information consult the ESA meeting web site or contact the Program Chair, Frank Gilliam, or Program Coordinator, Jennifer Riem:

Dr. Frank S. Gilliam Department of Biological Sciences Marshall University Huntington, WV  25755-2510 E-mail:  gilliam@marshall.edu Phone:  (304) 696-3636 FAX:(304) 696-3243

Jennifer Riem Program Assistant Ecological Society of America 1990 M Street, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20036 USA Phone: (202) 833-8773 x 218 Fax: (202) 833-8775 Email: