Papers should be structured around Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion sections, where appropriate for the subject matter.

Format – Manuscripts should be prepared in MSWord. The headings and text should be presented in 12-point Arial or Calibri font. The text should use 1.5 line spacing, with no extra line spacing between paragraphs, and should not include text columns, creative formatting or additional fonts. Headings should be sentence case format and never numbered. There should be no more than three heading levels. Primary headings should be presented in bold, secondary headings in bold and italics, and tertiary headings in italics. Avoid footnotes. Tables and figures (graphs, photographs or scanned images) should not be part of the text but prepared as separate file but please include a list of figure captions at the end of the manuscript.

Editorial style – Manuscripts should be written in clear English (UK spelling). Consult the Oxford English Dictionary for spelling, capitalisation, hyphenation and abbreviation conventions. Consult a copy of the journal for general style conventions. The guideline document Presenting Mathematical and Statistical Data is available for download at https://www.nisc.co.za/products/59/journals/african-zoology and clarifies conventions for this aspect of data presentation. Statistics in text should include sufficient information and permit the reader to corroborate the analysis, therefore report the full test statistic. Authors are urged to accurately disclose measures of variability, uncertainty, measurement error, etc. Unusual statistical procedures need to be explained in sufficient detail, including references if appropriate, for the reader to reconstruct the analysis.

Naming conventions – Scientific names should be given in full in the text when first mentioned. Authors should consult taxonomic authorities such as the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and the Nomenclator Zoologicus. Taxonomic authorities should follow the name of the taxon without intervening punctuation and should not be abbreviated. If the year is added, a comma must separate the author’s name and year.

Voucher specimens – Authors of taxonomic works are encouraged to deposit voucher specimens in an established permanent collection. This collection should be cited in the publication. All nucleic acid sequences should be placed in Genbank and accession numbers included in the manuscript.

Referencing – Multiple citations in the text must be separated by semicolons and cited chronologically in the form (Whitfield 1998, 2005; Gibson and Davis 2012). If there is more than one citation with the same publication year, these should be listed alphabetically. If previously published work is quoted directly, the citation must include the author, year of publication, and page number as in (Pringle 2013, p. 63). If more than two authors are cited in a reference, use only the name of the first author followed by ‘et al’. For presenting the full list of references at the end of the manuscript, please consult our guide Reference Exemplars for Authors available for download at https://www.nisc.co.za/products/59/journals/african-zoology. The reference list should be in alphabetical order by first author, and include all the authors of a given reference (do not use ‘et al.’ in the list); likewise, use full journal titles. URLs may be cited only for references that are not available in print (such as a webpage) or ones that link to hard-to-find sources (e.g. municipal document), and these URLs must be up-to-date at the time of submission. Include DOIs only for articles without complete bibliographic details, such as articles published online early and not paginated and assigned to a volume or issue.

Example reference list:

Allanson BR, Baird D, Heydorn AE. 1999. Perspectives. In: Allanson BR, Baird D (eds), Estuaries of South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp 321–327.

IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). 2012. 2012 IUCN Red List of threatened species. Available at http://www.iucnredlist.org [accessed 18 January 2013].

Vergara P, Aguirre JI, Fernández-Cruz M. 2007. Arrival date, age and breeding success in White Stork Ciconia ciconia. Journal of Avian Biology 38: 573–579.

Tables and Figures – Tables and figures should contain only information directly relevant to the content of the paper. Each table and figure should be numbered (arabic numerals), must include a full, stand-alone caption, and each must be sequentially mentioned in the text. Highly stylised formatting should be avoided. Tables may use thin, horizontal lines but should not include cells with shading. Authors must ensure that their figures conform to the style of the journal. Pay particular attention to line thickness, font and figure proportions, taking into account the Journal’s printed page size (210 x 275 mm). Costs of redrawing figures may be charged. Please refer to Figure Guidelines for Authors: format, style and technical considerations available for download at https://www.nisc.co.za/products/59/journals/african-zoology. For digital photographs or scanned images the resolution should be at least 300 dpi for colour or greyscale artwork and a minimum of 600 dpi for black line drawings. These can be saved (in order of preference) in PSD, JPEG, PDF or EPS format. Graphs, charts or maps can be saved in AI, PDF or EPS format. MS Office files (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) are also acceptable but DO NOT EMBED Excel graphs or Powerpoint slides in a MS Word document, rather send the original Excel or Powerpoint files. More detailed technical information is given in Figure Guidelines for Authors.