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2010 SCB MEETING: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS FOR ORAL, POSTER, AND SPEED PRESENTATIONS

SCB is now accepting abstracts for oral, poster, and speed presentations for the 24th International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB), Conservation for a Changing Planet, which will be held 3-7 July 2010 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Abstracts must be submitted electronically by 20 January 2010. The call for proposals for symposia, workshops, discussions groups, and short courses was issued previously; the deadline was 14 October 2009.

SCB expects to make decisions on abstracts by 10 March. Notifications will be sent by email only. Please make sure that the one email address you provide is your primary email address and is entered correctly. We encourage you to carefully think about the presentation format that best meets your goals (oral, poster, or speed).

The scientific program will include plenary sessions, invited symposia, workshops, discussions groups, short courses, poster sessions, and concurrent sessions of oral presentations and speed presentations. Due to the high number of attendees expected at ICCB and, consequently, limited time and space for oral presentations, poster presentations are strongly encouraged.

Meeting Theme: Conservation for a Changing Planet

Humans are causing large changes to the ecology of Earth. Industrial development and agriculture are changing landscapes. Carbon emissions to the atmosphere are changing climates. Nowhere on Earth are changes to climate having more drastic effects on ecosystems and human cultures than in the north. For example, circumpolar caribou and reindeer populations are declining with major consequences for indigenous peoples of the north, motivating our use of caribou in the congress logo. Developing conservation strategies to cope with our changing planet is arguably the greatest challenge facing today's world and its biological diversity.

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION

Reviewers have access to the entire abstract except the names of the presenters. To increase the probability that your abstract will be accepted, and in your preferred format, please consider the following criteria carefully:

1. Scientific merit
2. Application to conservation science, management, policy, and education
3. Clarity of presentation (for example, abstract begins with a clear statement of an issue and ends with a substantive conclusion)

Author Registration

All presenters must be registered and paid in full by the early deadline of 6 April 2010. Names and abstracts of authors who do not register and pay by 6 April will not be included in the congress program.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Individuals are limited to presenting only one symposium, oral, speed, or poster presentation. If your name appears on more than one abstract, please ensure that you are listed as the presenter for only one of them. Oral presentations will be grouped by topic and limited to 15 minutes: 12 minutes for presentation and 3 minutes for questions. Please choose from the list of general topic areas provided in the submission process to assist us in selecting an appropriate session for your presentation. If your abstract is accepted but cannot be accommodated as an oral presentation, you may be offered the opportunity to present a poster. All oral presentation rooms will be equipped with a computer and a data projector. Detailed information will be available to presenters several months before the congress.

SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATIONS

All individual symposium speakers must submit an abstract following the instructions for the oral presentation format. A tracking number will be provided to all symposium organizers. If you do not have this number, please contact the organizer of your symposium. Do not submit an abstract for an invited symposium presentation without this number. It is the responsibility of the symposium organizer to make sure that all speakers register before the deadline and according to the instructions provided.

POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Poster presenters will receive general instructions on poster format in the email notification of acceptance. Advice on designing science posters is available at www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters. Posters will be displayed prominently and for the entire meeting; special sessions dedicated to posters will allow in-depth discussion between authors and other attendees.

SPEED PRESENTATIONS

If your paper topic would be of interest to a wide range of people and you would like your presentation to lead to an extended conversation with colleagues who are specifically interested in your work, you may wish to submit an abstract for a speed presentation. In the first hour of a speed presentation session, 15 speakers will be given 4 minutes each to present their key ideas and results. In the second hour, presenters will station themselves at separate tables where they can interact with people who are interested in learning more about their work.

To participate in the speed presentations, simply submit an abstract according to the standard guidelines and indicate that you would like your abstract to be considered for a speed presentation. If your abstract is accepted for a speed presentation, you will be notified by the steering committee and asked to prepare a 4-minute presentation instead of a traditional (15-minute) presentation. If your abstract is not accepted for a speed presentation, it still will be considered for a traditional oral presentation or poster.

STUDENT AWARD CANDIDATES

Student awards for oral presentations are managed by SCB's Education and Student Affairs Committee. All questions about student awards should be directed to studentawards@conbio.org.

Student award candidates (restricted to 15-minute oral presentations, no posters, no speed presentations) must submit 2 abstracts. Both abstracts must be submitted online by 20 January 2010 and formatted according to the instructions provided. Both abstracts must be for the same work and have the identical title and authors.

The extended abstract must have a minimum of 500 words and a maximum of 800 words. Word limits apply only to the abstract body and do not include the title, figures, and all other requested information about the authors. The extended abstract must include a maximum of 3 figures or tables total (i.e., not three figures plus three tables).

Abstracts that are not submitted according to the instructions presented here will not be accepted. In recent years, the rejection rate has been approximately 85%. Many abstracts have been rejected simply because these instructions were not followed.

Your extended abstract submission must include
1. Presentation title (same title as for regular abstract)
2. Abstract body (between 500 and 800 words)
3. Authors of abstract (same authors as for regular abstract)
4. Maximum of 3 figures or tables
5. Roles of each author if two or more authors are listed on the abstract. The student must be the primary author and must submit the abstract under that name. In other words, the name of the student applying for the award and the name of the primary author must be identical.
6. Degree pursued or, for those who already have received a Ph.D., date of defense. Current students and students with a graduation date no earlier than 11 July 2009 are eligible to apply.

Criteria for Selection of Finalists

The regular abstract will be included in the review process with all other abstracts for the congress and will be evaluated according to the same criteria as all other abstracts. Thus, an abstract may be accepted for presentation even if the author is not selected as a student award finalist. To present as a student award finalist at the congress, both abstracts must be accepted.

The extended abstract will go through a review process specific to candidates for student awards. The criteria applied by reviewers in selecting finalists for student awards are
1. Relevance to conservation
2. Scientific merit
3. Presentation

The student awards subcommittee will select 12 finalists to make oral presentations at the congress. Each reviewer will attend all of the presentations. Each finalist will receive a monetary award.

The following criteria will be applied to select awardees from among the student finalists.
1. Scientific rigor of the research
2. Novelty of the research
3. Creativity of the approach
4. Explicit relevance of the study to conservation
5. Clear presentation of the study in the text of the extended abstract
6. Appropriateness and information content of the figures submitted with the extended abstract

MENTORING PROGRAM

To encourage participation of members whose first language is not English, SCB's student affairs subcommittee offers a mentoring service for students who wish to submit abstracts for oral or poster presentations.

If you wish to take advantage of this mentoring program, simply submit an abstract according to the standard guidelines; indicate that you are a student, that English is not your first language, and that you would like your abstract to be mentored.

Further instructions will be sent to your email address after you submit your abstract. A mentor will contact you and provide guidance on grammar and clarity of writing. The mentor also will ensure that the abstract meets the technical criteria for submission. Note that it is not the role of the mentor to provide scientific guidance or to write the abstract.

The mentoring program will close two weeks before the abstract submission deadline to allow the mentors time to suggest edits to the submitter and for the submitter to edit the abstract.

For more complete information on the call for abstracts visit www.conbio.org/2010

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