Dear Colleagues,

You are cordially invited to participate in the 1st International Electronic Conference on Biological Diversity, Ecology, and Evolution (BDEE 2021), sponsored by the MDPI open access journal Diversity. The meeting is an opportunity for researchers in the field of science of biodiversity to present their research and exchange ideas with colleagues. This is an electronic conference, removing the need to travel and eliminating participation expenses.

The conference will be organized around the following general topics, providing a forum for presenting and discussing new results. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Marine diversity
2. Animal diversity
3. Plant diversity
4. Microbial diversity and culture collections
5. Chemical biodiversity and chemical ecology
6. Biodiversity conservation
7. Biogeography and macroecology
8. Phylogeny and evolution
9. Biodiversity loss and dynamics
10. Mesophotic ecosystems diversity
11. Invasive species and diversity

This will be a virtual conference held at www.sciforum.net, a platform developed and sponsored by MDPI to organize and provide technical support for electronic conferences.

The format of the conference is as follows: After abstract acceptance, the authors will submit a pre-recorded video presentation or a series of narrated slides that will be accessible online, open for discussion, comments, and questions during the entire conference and will remain available after the e-conference. Authors are requested to submit a full description of their work in a conference paper that will be peer reviewed and, upon acceptance, probably published in the MDPI Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal. Paper submission is not a requirement for active conference participation.

The participation is free of charge for both authors and attendees. The accepted proceedings papers will probably be published in the MDPI Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal and available online on the MDPI website. Selected extended versions of the papers will be published in a Special Issue of the journal Diversity with a 20% discount on the article processing charge (ISSN 1424-2818; Diversity).

The best conference paper and presentation will receive an award of 500 CHF, as well as an offer to publish an extended paper, free of charge, in the Special Issue of Diversity.

We look forward to engaging in exciting discussions and hearing new ideas and perspectives from experts in the field. All participants are welcome to join the online conference.

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Michael Wink

Submission should be completed online by authors by registering with https://sciforum.net/ and using the “Start New Submission” function once logged into system.

1. Scholars interested in participating in the conference can submit their abstract (about 200–300 words) online at this website until 20 January 2021 15 February 2021 (Abstract Deadline).
2. Based on the submitted abstract, the Conference Committee will conduct a pre-evaluation of whether a contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for the 1st International Electronic Conference on Biological Diversity, Ecology, and Evolution. All authors will be notified by 5 February 2021 20 February 2021 about the acceptance of their abstract.
3. If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author will be invited to prepare a full description of their work (max. 8 pages), optionally accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation/poster, until the submission deadline of 1 March 2021.
4. The conference proceedings papers and presentations will be available for discussion on https://sciforum.net/conference/BDEE2021 during the time of the conference 15-31 March 2021.
5. The accepted proceedings papers will probably be published as one dedicated volume in the MDPI Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal. Publication of proceedings paper is free of charge.
   Note: Before publication, Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal will review accepted papers using the powerful text comparison tool: iThenticate. This procedure aims to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism.
   Submissions with a high repetition rate and lack of novelty will not be published in the conference proceedings.
6. The open access journal Diversity will publish a conference Special Issue, while accepted abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings. After the conference, the Conference Committee will select abstracts for which extended papers may be included for publication in the Special Issue of the journal Diversity (the submission to the journal is independent from the conference proceedings and will follow the usual process of the journal, including peer review and application of an APC).

Proceedings Manuscripts

Manuscripts for Proceedings must conform to the following structure:

Title

• Full author names
• Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors’ email addresses
• Abstract (200–250 words)
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results and Discussion
• Conclusions
• (Acknowledgments)
• References

Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word or any other word processor and should be converted to PDF format before submission. The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should count at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables, and references) .

Microsoft Word

Authors must use the Microsoft Word template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and create difficulties related to layout.

BDEE2021-template.docx

Manuscript Preparation

• Paper Format: A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm × 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, and left and right sides).
• Formatting/Style: Papers should be prepared following the style of the BDEE2021 template. The full titles and cited papers must be given. Reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example, [4] or [1–3], and all the references should be listed separately as the last section at the end of the manuscript.
• Author List and Affiliation Format: Authors’ full first and last names must be given. Any abbreviated middle names can be added. For papers written by various contributors, a corresponding author must be designated. The PubMed/MEDLINE format is used for affiliations: complete street address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and email address should be added. All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties, who provided only minor contributions, should only be listed under Acknowledgments. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
• Figures, Schemes, and Tables: Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Figure and schemes must be numbered (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, etc.) and an explanatory title must be added. Tables should be inserted into the main text with numbers and titles supplied for all tables. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. Please supply legends for all figures, schemes, and tables. The legends should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before a table, figure, or scheme.

Presentation Slides

Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the manuscript. Slides, if available, will be directly displayed on the website using Sciforum.net’s proprietary slides viewer. Slides can be prepared in exactly the same way as for any traditional conference where research results can be presented. Slides should be converted to the PDF format before submission so that our process can easily and automatically convert them for online displaying.

BDEE2021-PPT-template.pptx

Video Presentations

Authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. The video should be no longer than 20 minutes and be prepared with the following formats:

• MOV
• MPEG4
• MP4
• AVI
• WMV
• MPEGPS
• FLV

The video should be submitted via email before 1 March 2021.

Presentation of Posters

Posters will be available on this conference website during and after the event. As with papers presented at conferences, participants will be able to ask questions and make comments about the posters. Posters can be presented without an accompanying Proceedings paper will be available online on this website during and after the e-conference. However, they will not be added to the proceedings of the conference.

Potential Conflicts of Interest

It is the authors’ responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there are no conflicts, please state here “The authors declare no conflicts of interest”. This should be conveyed in a separate “Conflicts of Interest” statement preceding the “Acknowledgments” and “References” sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under the “Acknowledgments” section.

Copyright

MDPI, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe that authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting a communications paper to this conference, you retain the copyright of your paper, but you grant MDPI the non-exclusive right to publish this paper online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your paper to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher (if required by that publisher).