The oral presentations will limited to15 minutes long with 5 minutes for questions. Authors are encouraged to use electronic media for their presentations (Power Point or html), but slides and overheads will also be accepted. PC and Mac computers will be provided by the organization, but authors may bring their own equipment. Students will be eligible for an award to the best presentation.

Authors are encouraged to provide oral presentations, but posters are accepted in special cases. Please limit the usage of posters to present large projects that are not appropriate for a short presentation. National and international students are specially encouraged to give oral presentations, even if English is not their first language. There are no specific guidelines for posters.

Abstracts are required for all the papers and posters presented. The abstracts should include a short and concise title, name of authors and affiliation, email address and main text. If references are included in the text, a list of cited literature should be added at the end of the abstract. References should include author/s's last name/s, initials, year of publication, title, periodical (abbreviated), volume and pages, or editorial and place of publication. Figures or tables are not accepted. All sections of the abstract should be typed in lower case. Please underline or italize scientific names, but not other Latin terms. Prepare the abstract with a world processor, PC or Mac compatible, and send it electronically to avaldes@nhm.org. Please do not send pdf documents. If the author does not have access to the internet, floppy disks, zip disks, CD-ROMs, or high quality hard copies are accepted. Please mail materials to Ángel Valdés, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA. Abstracts should be received no later than May 1 to be included in the proceedings of the conference.