Call for Abstracts
Our Call for Abstracts is now closed.
Thank you to everyone who submitted.
Our team will reach out to you with feedback soon!
Presentation Types
Papers may be given as an oral presentation or as a poster. Please review the draft conference Themes / Sessions for Presentations and Posters below. Read the information below carefully and submit your Presentation or Poster abstract at the link below. Students interested in being considered for a Founders' Award should read about the award and then indicate their desire in the submission application. By submitting an abstract, the presenting author agrees to register for the conference and to deliver the presentation if it is accepted for the scientific program.
All abstracts must be submitted online via this link. The deadline for abstract submission has been extended to April 8th at 11:59 PM ET.
You will be notified about the acceptance of your abstract by late April. For questions regarding abstracts or the scientific program, contact Lisa Sorenson (e-mail: lisa.sorenson@birdscaribbean.org) or Howard Nelson (e-mail: howard.nelson@fauna-flora.org), Co-chairs of the Scientific Program Committee.
Oral presentations should be no more than 12 minutes in duration to allow for a 3 minute question-and-answer period at the end. Presentations may be made in either English or Spanish. We strongly encourage presenters to have bilingual slides/posters to help maximize access to their presentation. It is the presenter’s responsibility to translate content; Google Translate or DeepL Translator provide acceptable translations.
Since there are a limited number of available slots in the scientific program, we suggest that presenting authors plan for only one 15-minute contributed oral presentation. However, attendees who have been invited to present in an accepted symposium may submit a second abstract for a contributed 15-minute oral presentation.
Keep in mind that the Scientific Committee reserves the right to assign an abstract to either an oral or poster presentation based on available space in the program. Depending on the number of abstracts received, the Scientific Program Committee may change some 15-minute sessions to become lightening talk sessions in order to accept more oral presentations. Lightning talks are 8 minutes in total; presentations should be no more than 5-minutes in duration, with time for questions and answers.
Posters are especially appropriate for smaller, more concise projects or those in an early or intermediate stage of development; abstracts providing explicit final results are more likely to be accepted for an oral presentation than those with preliminary or ambiguous findings. Posters are an excellent way to share your work; they will be on display for the duration of the conference and there will be a dedicated poster session so that authors can discuss their work with others. We do not anticipate limiting the number of poster abstracts that a single presenting author can submit.
Instructions for Preparing your Abstract
Your abstract may be submitted in English or Spanish. If possible, please submit the text of your abstract in both of these languages. This will greatly reduce the workload for our volunteer translators and the potential for translation errors. Simultaneous translation will be available during the meeting and presenters may speak in Spanish or English.
Abstracts must be limited to no more than 200 words (including title, author(s), institution(s) or organization(s) and text) and should succinctly summarize your findings. Abstracts must be submitted by the deadline date of 30 March. Space on the program is limited so be sure to get your abstract in on time, make sure it is properly formatted and fits into one of the sessions identified above. We suggest you prepare your abstract in Word so that you can edit and format it properly and do a Word count, then copy and paste the text into the appropriate box in the online form. In preparing your abstract, please follow the following style format exactly (use symbols like asterisk (*), then double asterisk (**), dagger (†), then double dagger (‡), to indicate different institutions for authors).
Sample Abstracts and Formatting
EVIDENCE THAT ERADICATING EURASIAN SHIP RATS HAS BOOSTED SEABIRD POPULATIONS IN ANTIGUA
Victor Joseph*, Joseph Prosper*, Andrea Otto*, Donald Anthonyson*, Mykl Clovis*, Carole McCauley*, Ingrid Sylvester*, and Jenny C. Daltry** *Environmental Awareness Group, St. John’s, Antigua, **Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge, UK. e-mail: eag@candw.ag
Between 1995 and 2006, the Offshore Islands Conservation Project (aka the Antiguan Racer Conservation Project) successfully eradicated Eurasian ship rats (Rattus rattus) from 11 Antiguan offshore islands using brodifacoum bait. To quantify the effects of removing rats on seabirds, the total number of nesting Red-billed Tropic Birds, Bridled Terns, Sooty Terns, Brown Noddies, Brown Boobies and Caribbean Brown Pelicans have been monitored annually on five islands (Great Bird, Rabbit, Redhead, Lobster, Green). All target species have increased significantly since rats were removed: e.g., Red-billed Tropic Bird nests on Great Bird Island increased by >500% between 1995 and 2009, and Caribbean Brown Pelican nests on Rabbit Island rose by >600% between 1998 and 2009. A comparative study of rat-free versus rat-infested islands revealed a significantly higher density of both seabirds and land birds on islands cleared of rats. This research provides strong evidence that ship rats are a serious yet solvable threat to birds in the Lesser Antilles.
Guidelines for Writing a Good Abstract:
The abstract is a very brief overview of your ENTIRE study or project. It tells the reader WHAT you did, WHY you did it, HOW you did it, WHAT you found, and WHAT it means. The abstract should briefly state the purpose of the work (introduction and objectives), how the problem was studied or how the project was carried out (methods), the principal findings or main outcomes (results), and what the findings mean (discussion and conclusion), in other words, what are the implications, impacts and benefits of your work. It is important to be descriptive but concise--say only what is essential, using no more words than necessary to convey meaning.
Refer to the attached document below for more help and information on how to write an abstract (and a good example).
HowtoWriteanAbstract.doc