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Instructions to Authors

Tuatara aims at stimulating and widening interest in the natural sciences in New Zealand by publishing articles (a) reviewing important recent advances (b) giving clear, illustrated, keys to identify New Zealand plants and animals and (c) relating New Zealand biological problems to a broader Pacific or Southern Hemisphere context.

Manuscripts (original and 1 copy) should be typed, double-spaced throughout, with a wide left hand margin (about 4cm) on one side only on A4 paper. Attempt to avoid footnotes. Citations in the text should give the name of the author(s) and year of publication. Publications by the same author in the same year should be distinguished by letters, viz. “Smith (1969b)”. In the References section, titles of periodicals should be given in full and underlined and should be followed by volume and page numbers. Fur further details, consult a recent issue of Tuatara.

Illustrations should be kept to a minimum. Photographs (2 copies of each) should be printed on glossy paper and submitted unmounted, the size they are to be published. Except under special circumstances, or where the author(s) pay costs illustrations cannot be published in colour. Drawings, for best reproduction, should be drawn about twice their published size. They should be done in black Indian Ink on high quality paper, such as Bristol Board. Instant lettering should be used where appropriate. The second copy of each drawing need not be of publication standard. Tables should be numbered serially and referred to in the text. Descriptive notes for tables should be minimal. Units of measurement should be placed at the head of each column of the tables. SI units of measurement should be used. Author's name and figure number should be written lightly in soft pencil on the back of each figure.

Abstract: An abstract of up to 150 words should accompany each paper. It should be preceded by up to 12 keywords. Keywords should be carefully chosen to enable retrieval of your article from an information system. Use the whole article, not just the title and abstract, for deriving keywords.

Proofs are provided at the “galley” stage to the author(s). They should be checked and corrected, preferably in accordance with conventional proofreader's marks given in Style Book (New Zealand Government Printer). Because of the high cost of corrections, only essential changes should be made to the article at the proof stage.

Reprints should be ordered when proofs are returned to the Editor. They are charged to the author(s) at cost. No free reprints are supplied.

Published by the School of Biological Sciences (Botany and Zoology) and Victoria University Press, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington.

Cover Illustration: by Philippa Spackman.