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Journal of Reproductive Success

The Journal of Reproductive Success is an annual compendium of success stories detailing steps taken to achieve reproductive success in zoo and aquarium animals.  

Sharing success stories

Across Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) animal programs, we sometimes see low rates of reproductive success when breeding recommendations are attempted. 

While there are many possible reasons for this, the AZA Reproductive Management Center would like to create a forum for sharing reproductive success stories rooted in husbandry practices that lead to successful breeding and production of offspring.  

Such case studies are often difficult to publish, and it is not easy to widely disseminate the valuable lessons that are learned in the process. The Journal of Reproductive Success is designed for sharing the ideas and innovations that have worked. 

We will accept submissions throughout the year, but we will review the submitted papers at the end of each year, and work with the authors to make the final papers ready for inclusion in that year’s volume.  

The RMC will produce one volume of the Journal per year, published as on online PDF available for download on our RMC website.

Manuscript categories

We envision papers being 3-5 single-spaced pages of text (12-point Times New Roman font), focusing on the most salient details. References, photos and diagrams should be included in the manuscript itself and will not count toward the page guidelines. (Longer papers are possible, as well.)

  • Small N case studies of pairs/groups that have not bred successfully until now.  
    Papers would describe the species biology as it pertains to reproduction, the individuals in question, their history, housing/husbandry description, what had been attempted in the past, what was maybe done differently this year and what was achieved.  Even if multiple manipulations were done in the "successful" year and you can’t tell what made the difference, at least it was documented and none of those manipulations apparently were harmful.  (See suggested template.)  
  • 'First reported breeding of …' stories.  
    Very similar in format/content to case studies above, but these would be first-evers as opposed to "we finally got these to breed at our facility." Authors would need to verify in the paper that the species has not been bred previously in the AZA, and should identify whether the species has been successfully bred anywhere before in the zoological profession or private sector. (See suggested template.) 
  • 'Reliable recipes at our facility.'
    These are stories from facilities with demonstrated, repeated success with multiple pairs/groups of a species, not just a pair. This is their cookbook for how they set up animals to breed, how they monitor, do breeding introductions, manage nesting/pregnancy/birth/hatching, etc., with their ideas on what is critical and their reflections on what they’ve tried over the years that didn’t work. (See suggested template.) 
     

SUBMITTING YOUR PAPER

To submit your paper, email the manuscript as a single Microsoft Word file to RMC Director David Powell (dpowell@stlzoo.org). 

Want to discuss a possible submission?

If you’d like to discuss a possible submission to the Journal of Reproductive Success, please contact David Powell, RMC Director, at dpowell@stlzoo.org.