MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The electronic version of the manuscript including tables (but not figures) must be prepared as a single file by means of a word processing program such as Microsoft Word ’97 or later version, or other programs compatible with MS Word. When preparing the text, authors must follow these formatting options: font type — Times New Roman; font size — 12; line spacing — 1.5; for Greek symbols it is recommended that the font Symbol, Times New Roman CE, or Greek be used. Paragraphs should be separated by an extra line space and their starting lines should not begin with tabs.

SYSTEMATIC MANUSCRIPTS:
Authors must strictly follow the latest edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. First occurrence of each species in the manuscript should include author's name and year of the description: e.g. Gastronyssus bakeri Fain, 1955.

For multi-authored taxa the last author must be separated by the Latin conjunction “et”: e.g. Myocoptes squamosus Fain, Munting et Lukoschus, 1969.

If the manuscript contains descriptions of new taxa of the species group, the author should indicate the museum or the institutional collection where the type or the type series are deposited and, if possible, the registration numbers of the type specimens. 

Names of species or genera and setal abbreviations should be given in italic. The authors should make their intention to describe a new taxon or propose a new change in nomenclature explicit by using appropriate Latin abbreviations (e. g., sp. n., gen. n., syn. n., comb. n.), when such actions or judgments are first proposed. 
Specific examples are given below, under “FORMAT OF SUBMITTED MANUSCRIPTS”. Authors must strictly follow this form of presentation. 

Spelling of geographical names should be verified using The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) database (http://gnswww.nga.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp). If the name of a geographic locality is not unique within the 1st level administrative region (province, state), then it should be accompanied by its geographic coordinates. Authors should explicitly state whether geographic coordinates were acquired from GPS or from the above online source.

REFERENCES
All citations in the text and references should be given in the modern Latin alphabet.
Citations in the text should be given in parentheses as follows:
One author — Homsher (1995) or (Homsher 1995);
Two authors — Homsher and Robbins (1999) or (Homsher and Robbins 1999);
Three or more authors — Homsher et al. (1998) or (Homsher et al. 1998).
Papers by the same author(s) in the same year should be distinguished by the letters a, b, c, etc. If papers have the same senior author and the same year of publication but different sets of two or more junior authors, they should also be marked with letters a, b, c, etc. in the text and in the reference paragraph, for example Homsher et al. (1998a, 1998b) or (Homsher et al. 1998a, 1998b). In cases of multiple citations, papers must be arranged chronologically and alphabetically within the year (Homsher et al. 1998; Alekseev 2005; Mironov et al. 2005). Papers may be cited “in press” only if proof has been produced. Papers that have not been accepted for publication (submitted papers or reviewed papers) may not be included in the list of references and must be cited either as “unpubl.” or as “pers. comm.”; in such cases the citation is indicated in the following style: (S.V. Mironov, pers. comm.). 

TABLES
Each table should have an Arabic numeral (e.g. “Table 1”) and start on a new page. Width of tables should be adjusted to fit the A4 (21 * 29.7 cm) page format with left and right margins not less than 2.5 cm; a smaller font size (as small as 9) is allowed in tables. 

ILLUSTRATIONS
All illustrations should be of excellent quality, black-and-white (line drawings, maps, graphs) or grey scale (for photographs), and identified in the text as “Fig.” or “Figs.” depending on the number of figures to which reference is being made. They should be numbered according to the sequence of their citation in the text. The following modes of numbering are acceptable: Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3 …or Fig. 1A, B, C… or Fig. 1a, b, c…). Combining line drawings and photographs or line and half-tone drawings in a single figure is unacceptable. 

All illustrative materials should be submitted electronically, in a form completely ready for publication. Each drawing, photograph, or block of photographs should be submitted as a separate file (LZW-compressed tif, psd, or jpg). Only bitmap mode is allowed for line drawings. The file name should contain a figure number, for example, “Fig1.tif”. The print size of a drawing, photo, or block of photos should not be larger than 16 * 24 cm. The resolution for line drawings should be at least 1200 dpi, and that for photographs not less than 600 dpi. Uniting several illustrative objects into a single file is unacceptable. Graphs and diagrams should be prepared as a single file by means of MS Excel. Colored graphs or diagrams are not acceptable.