Submissions

Author Guidelines

Scope

African Entomology is an open access peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original research, reviews, collections of articles on a common topic, discussions of topics with broad interest, and short communications on all aspects of entomology (including insects, arachnids, myriapods and nematodes), emphasising the advancement of entomology on the African continent. A broad range of topics are covered including, but not limited to; behaviour, biology, conservation, ecology, evolution, forensics, medical, molecular biology, systematics, pest management, physiology, and taxonomy. Submissions of work from other parts of the world will be considered if it is of strong relevance to entomology in Africa. Prerequisites for publication will be originality, clarity, and significance as relevant to a better understanding of the entomology in Africa.

Language

Manuscripts should be submitted in concise and clear English using U.K. spelling. Authors for whom English is a second language should have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. Our recommended language editing service provider, who should be contacted directly for pricing and payment information, is Barry Blair Editing: blairbh@telkomsa.net

Submission of Manuscripts

Submission to African Entomology is completely online. All correspondence takes place via the online system. All authors must agree and approve of the manuscript to be submitted, as well as the order in which authors are presented, prior to submission and after revision.

Cover Letter

An accompanying cover letter should outline the significance of the paper and be addressed to the Editorial Office. Authors must propose at least three referees and provide their contact details. These may not be from the same institution as either of the authors of the manuscript, and may not include colleagues with whom the authors have recently published. Authors need to declare any potential conflicts of interest (see Policies).

The cover letter should also include the following statement: The authors agree that the submitted work has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or academic thesis), that the work is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and that all authors agree to the publication of this work.

Title Page

A Title Page must be submitted as a separate file from the main manuscript in MSWord format. It should include:

1. the article title,
2. authors' names and complete affiliations,
3. the address for manuscript correspondence (including telephone and fax numbers and an e-mail address), and
4. Role and degree of contribution for each author using the CRediT Contributor Role Taxonomy. ORCiD identifiers are compulsory for the corresponding and/or lead author but should be provided for all authors who have one.

Manuscript

Text and tables should be submitted as MSWord documents. Manuscripts should be 1.5 - spaced and have line numbering throughout. Pages should be organised as follows:

The manuscript text should include the Title, but Author information must be omitted (to ensure double-blind review). The title should be followed by an abstract of no more than 250 words for full-length papers, or 200 words for short communications. The abstract must be followed by up to 6 keywords that do not appear in the title.

The Introduction should be concise and without subheadings. Materials and Methods should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments, and the statistical procedures to be reproduced. Results and Discussions may be combined and may be organised into subheadings. Acknowledgments should be brief and should precede the References. Tables and Legends to Figures should be placed after the text. Illustrations are to be numbered as figures following their sequence in the text. Clearly annotated digital copies of line drawings and photographs must be submitted with each manuscript.

References

These should be cited in the text by author and date following the style of articles published in African Entomology and must not be numbered. All references in the text must be reflected at the end of the paper, with the names of authors listed alphabetically, and the author’s initials should follow the surname in all cases. In the text the names of two co-authors are linked by an ampersand (&); for three or more the first author’s name is followed by et al.

Examples in the text are: Williams (1929); (Williams 1929); Johnson & Smith (1950a,b,c, 1953); (Johnson & Smith 1950a; Thompson et al. 1963); Thompson et al. (1963) or (Thompson et al. 1963).

Unpublished references are to be cited as: A. Smith (pers. comm.); (A. Smith, pers. comm.); A. Smith (unpubl.); (A. Smith, unpubl.); A. Smith (in prep.); A. Smith (in press): only the last category must appear in the references. The use of these terms must be restricted to an absolute minimum.

In the reference list, titles of periodicals and books must not be abbreviated and all nouns and adjectives of book titles should commence with an upper case letter. The following forms of citation should be followed:

Wilson DM. 1966. Insect walking. Annual Review of Entomology. 11(4):103–122. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094.

Wigglesworth VB. 1972. The Principles of Insect Physiology. 7th Edition. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer; p. 3–45. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094.

Taylor LR, Palmer JPM. 1972. Aerial sampling. In: Van Emden, HF, Wilson G, editors. Aphid Technology. Cambridge, U.K.: Academic Press; p. 63–76. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094.

Tables

Avoid giving the same information in text tables and figures. Tables should be submitted on separate pages after the References section, each with a concise caption above, which is to be fully explanatory and ordinarily without references to text or figures. Avoid elaborate tables and keep the number of columns to a minimum.

Illustrations

Colour illustrations are encouraged and are presented at no charge. These can be provided at the end of the manuscript, each on a separate page for evaluation during the review process but should be provided as separate files after acceptance of the manuscript for publication purposes. 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, ideally, in PSD or PDF format, but JPEG is acceptable provided a high-resolution setting is used. Graphs, charts or maps can be saved in AI, or PDF format. MSOffice files (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) are also acceptable but DO NOT EMBED Excel graphs or PowerPoint slides in a MSWord document - rather send the original Excel or PowerPoint files. Figures will usually not be reproduced singly scattered throughout the text. Lettering and numbering in graphs and legends should be selected for uniformity and easy reading after reduction, and Arial typefaces are recommended. Magnifications must be indicated as scale bars on the figures.

Legends to figures must be typed on a separate page and appear after the references section, should be clear, unambiguous and concise.

Numbers and Units

The Système International d’Unités (SI) must be used. A decimal point, not a comma, must be used when citing decimal numbers.

Numbers to ten (inclusive) are written in words; numbers over ten are written in figures, except where part of a sequence.

Use a space as a thousands separator – never a comma.

Compound numbers below ninety-nine are hyphenated when spelt out, for instance, at the start of a sentence. (twenty-one BUT one hundred and one).

Fractions are hyphenated when spelt out (two-thirds).

Use the decimal point (never a decimal comma).

Insert a space between numerals and units (1.23 mm; 2.45 kg ha-1 BUT 17%; 23 °C)

All single-letter mathematical variables must be in italics: v=lbh (where v = volume, l = length, b = breadth, h = height)

This style convention has implications for reporting of statistics.

r² (for correlation coefficient); Student’s t-test; F = 34.234 AND p < 0.001 (note the spaces either side of the < sign)

For two letter variables use roman. (SD for standard deviation; CI for confidence interval)

Use a leading zero when relevant, (p = 0.34 or 0.045)

If a probability associated with a statistical value is very e.g., p = 0.000005 represent this as p < 0.001 (to no more than three decimal places).

Names of Statistical Tests

When derived from the names of two individuals should be linked by an en-dash instead of a hyphen. (Mann–Whitney U-test test; Kolmogorov–Smirnov test).

Proofs

Page proofs are provided for the purpose of checking typographic errors, and not for author’s corrections such as adjustments to language, style and punctuation. Excessive author corrections may be charged to authors.

Article Processing Charges

Article processing charges are levied on all accepted papers. The scale of charges for members and non-members of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa is shown below in South African Rands (ZAR). At least one of the listed authors per accepted manuscript must be a paid-up member of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa to qualify for the member discount.

Members: ZAR5,500.00
Non-members: ZAR6,800.00

The Entomological Society of Southern Africa membership discount will not be applied automatically. A request for the discount must be included in the manuscript cover letter, with the name and Entomological Society of Southern Africa membership number of the member clearly stated.

Taxonomic Papers

Authors must comply with the requirements of the Fourth Edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and with the published opinions of the International Commission. These papers should constitute a comprehensive treatment of a group delimited on taxonomic, geographic, ecological or other biologically meaningful criteria. Papers dealing with miscellaneous species having no such natural association will only be accepted if there are special circumstances. Such circumstances could include a paper that is additive or supplementary to a previously published comprehensive paper or that the description of one, or a small number of unrelated species is important for economic or other sound reasons.

ZooBank

Authors must register new scientific names in ZooBank and insert the accession number(s) after the keywords in the manuscript.

Example:

This article is registered in ZooBank under: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:69A163E0-822D-4 BC5-B230-ED5F1586E513

The species is registered in ZooBank under: Pseudopolydora eriyali: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:A63B4F2A-4D72-4FEE-A37F-E2EFC0FADE27

Style

The first mention of a genus should be followed by the unabbreviated name of the author. Species-group names should also be followed by the author of the taxon. The abbreviations gen. n., sp. n., syn. n., comb. n., stat. prom. or stat dem. should be used for distinguishing new genera and species, new synonymies, new combinations or changes of rank, as per ICZN-4. Italicise genus and species names. Telegraphic style must be used in descriptions which should be accompanied by a short summary of the principal diagnostic characters and a comparison of the new taxon with its closest relatives and other taxa with which it may be confused. Descriptions should be subdivided by appropriate subordinate headings.

The ‘discussion’ or ‘remarks’ section should be placed last. The use of figures to illustrate descriptions is encouraged and should permit some reduction in the length of the description of the parts illustrated. Reference to the original description of a taxon should always appear immediately below the heading. References listed under the heading, whether to the accepted name or synonyms, should always include the author, date and page number but not the title of the publication as this is provided in the reference section. This section should only include original references to nomenclatural changes or synonymies and should not be seen as a bibliography to the taxon. If, for a given taxonomic unit, adequate synonymies and references are already accessible in the literature, they should not be repeated, but a reference to the source should be given. Other important references pertaining to the taxon can be provided in the ‘remarks’ section.

The type species, with author and date, should be cited immediately beneath each genus treated (including synonyms). For each species treated, the museum in which the primary type (holo-, lecto- or neotype) is deposited, should be stated and listed in the Material examined section. If a type cannot be traced the reasons for this should be stated. All newly generated nucleic acid sequences should be deposited in GenBank and accession numbers provided in the manuscript. Concise lists of specimens examined should be presented for each species but, except in the case of types, label data should not be cited verbatim but should include the following information: country, province, numbers and sexes (symbols) of specimens, locality, latitude and longitude coordinates, altitude, date, collector and depository (in brackets). Map coordinates should be given for all localities and follow the degrees-minutes convention, e.g. 26°13′S 29°41′E. Use the “prime” symbol rather than “apostrophe” to indicate minutes. Coordinates can instead be listed in a gazetteer at the end of the paper, especially where there is repetition or many localities. For large numbers of specimens, dates and names of collectors can be arranged at the end of the Material examined section. Localities should be arranged in alphabetical order or some other logical sequence within countries or provinces.

Keys

Dichotomous keys giving precise diagnostic characters should be used to distinguish taxa.