Authors guidelines

Oral presentations will be allocated 15 minutes in total, made up of 12 minutes presentation with 3 minutes for discussion. Presenters should bring their presentation to the conference on a memory stick.  All presenters are requested to upload their talks at least the day before their scheduled presentation. A technician will be onsite to load your presentation.

Posters will be displayed for the duration of the conference. Each poster will be allocated a 90 cm wide x 135 cm high board and the poster must fit within this area.  All the material necessary for attaching the poster to the board will be supplied by the organizers.

Abstract submission

Participants are invited to submit oral and poster presentations under seven themes:

1. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning

Submissions may examine any aspect of biodiversity and function of deep-sea ecosystems organized in the following sub-sessions:

1. a) Pelagic systems. This sub-session will focus on organisms living in the deep water column, including fish, squid, and various kinds of plankton. Topics can include biology, diversity, physiology and ecology, or other integrative topics related to life in the midwater.
   

2. b) Microbial processes. This sub-session aims at discussing the relationship between microorganisms and deep-sea environments. Contributions might focus on (but are not limited to) microbial communities at vents, seeps, organic falls, organic-poor sediments, basalts, ship wrecks.
   

3. c) Vents, seeps and organic falls. This sub-session will take papers on all aspects of chemosynthetic environments, including taxonomy, phylogeny, ecology, physiology and evolution, of any kind of organisms from microbe to mega-fauna;
   

4. d) Canyons. Presentations can report on studies that focus solely on canyons, or research that compares canyons to other deep-sea habitats. Submissions that go beyond a simple demonstration that canyon habitats have different/similar faunal assemblages to other habitats will be particularly welcome;
   

5. e) Seamounts. Some topics we would like encourage for abstract submission include: studies with new biodiversity data or datasets of poorly explored areas; studies on how the geomorphology, oceanography, and biogeography drives the dynamics of different seamounts and thus their productivity;
   

6. f) Hadal systems.
   

2. 2.Advances in taxonomy and phylogeny
   

For this session we encourage submissions on aspects that cut across habitat/ecological boundaries in the realm of evolutionary biology, systematic biology, phylogeography and biogeography; new methodologies or approaches on alpha-taxonomy are also welcome.

3. 3.Autoecology
   

This session which will take papers that examine the biology and ecology (in its widest sense) of individual species from any deep sea environment. The presentation does not have to be limited to one species but look in detail at any species presented.

4. 4.Connectivity and biogeography
   

This session will be focusing on recent advances on the understanding of population connectivity and species distribution in the deep sea, including the processes that control connectivity and modulate biogeography, empirical estimates and modeling efforts.

5. 5.Evolutionary history and fossil records
   

The scope of this session will be any aspect of ancient deep-sea communities, including both chemosynthetic and non-chemosynthetic records, and investigations of phylogenetic evolutionary histories of deep-sea organisms with fossil calibrations.

6. 6.Natural and anthropogenic disturbance
   

This theme will consider papers that present and discuss results from studies examining the vulnerability, resilience and response of organisms to the impact of natural disturbance (e.g. cascading and turbidity events along slopes and volcanic eruptions), climate change or human activities.

7. 7.Stewardship of our deep oceans (DOSI)
   

This theme will consider papers that discuss current or proposed stewardship issues in our deep oceans raised by activities such as mining (SMS, nodules, cobalt crusts, phosporites etc), fisheries, oil and gas, deep-sea tailings placement and marine genetic resources.

Submission deadline:   20 March 2015    27 March 2015

To submit your abstract please download the template file (14DSBS_abstract_template.docx) and upload it using the following link: abstract submission.

The uploaded file (in Microsoft Office Word format) should be named "Lastname_Initial_14DSBS_abstract". If you are submitting more than one abstract add a number to your file name.

The abstract should be no longer than 350 words, and should outline the aims and content of the presentation.

Abstracts for both oral and poster presentation will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee.  Notification of acceptance will be emailed by the 30 April 2015.