The abstract submission portal is now open for MPIG 2026, which will take place on October 2nd and 3rd, at the University of Notre Dame.
The (extended) deadline to submit abstracts is Sunday, August 23th, at midnight CST.
You can submit your abstract here, and here is the link to pay for your registration fee ($25 for students, $35 for postdocs/contingent, $50 for faculty).
Recycling: Have a great talk planned for AABA or ASP? Practice it at MPIG! Our abstract deadline usually precedes AABA’s deadline; double-dipping is ok.
Student Competition: All student presenters will automatically be opted into a competition and given written feedback from volunteer faculty judges. There will be a small prize and recognition for the winners.
Word limit for abstract text (not including title and author names and affiliations): 275 words or 2000 characters.
File name: PLEASE name your file with the last name of the presenting author (e.g. Rutherford_MPIG2019.docx). Each year considerable time is spent renaming the numerous abstracts that are named simply “MPIG abstract”; there are much more fun ways for us to devote time to planning MPIG so help us out!
Scientific nomenclature:
- Include in the abstract (and the title as well if appropriate) the taxonomic name of the species discussed in your paper
- Italicize genus and species names
- Capitalize genus names
(The three points above are tasks that we take on every year and spend like a million hours on.)
Sample abstract:
The spatial ecology of gorilla nesting behavior: A case of directed seed dispersal and its consequences for large-seeded trees in an Afrotropical forest.
Marc S. Fourrier, Kathryn J. Jeffery, Kate. A. Abernethy, Lee J. T. White
Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, 63130
Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux, BP 20379, Libreville, Gabon
School of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK
msfourri@wustl.edu
In West-Central Africa, lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) consume large quantities of fruit and disperse tens of thousands of seeds/km . The majority of these seeds are dispersed intact and viable in dung, and often around the rim of a night-nest. Nests are predominantly constructed on the ground and in areas having a sparse over-canopy, thereby conferring benefits to the growth and survival of dispersed seed species. Despite our understanding of the importance of nest-sites to gorilla-dispersed seed species, little is known of the environmental factors that determine where gorillas construct their nests. Using the locations of 464 gorilla nest-sites in Lopé National Park, Gabon, we used spatial point process modeling to analyze the effects of eight different environmental covariates on the placement of gorilla nest-sites. We found that nest-site placement was strongly influenced by habitat (and thus, the composition of fruiting species), with a preferential construction of nests in habitats that harbored preferred fruit species. We also found that gorillas avoided heavily trafficked areas to construct their nests, especially between the months of September and December, a period that corresponded to a heightened elephant presence at Lopé. Our results demonstrate that gorilla-dispersed seeds at nest-sites experience a high degree of dispersal limitation, with some areas receiving a higher density of dispersed seeds over others, depending on the season, seed species, and sympatric megafauna. Lastly, we found that gorillas are more likely to construct nests in locations that had previously received gorilla nests, leading to a “clumped” distribution of nest-sites. The implications of these results for dispersed-seed, seed shadows, and tree recruitment patterns are discussed.
MPIG - Midwest Primate Interest Group 