I'm new to TeX, and am struggling to format the citations and bibliography as I want them for my thesis (written in Overleaf). I have tried countless packages and different citation/bibliography styles and have searched and read relevant forum threads. Yet, I'm stuck. Apologies if this has been answered before, but I would greatly appreciate some help as this is causing me great trouble and I have to submit my thesis in less than a week. I have attached a sample .bib reference below. The full 'references' file is imported from my Mendeley library.
In-text citations should be in the format:
text requiring reference (Toledo 2009).
Bibliography should be APA style, as below, or roughly similar.
Toledo, L. F. and Haddad, C. F. B. (2009) Colors and Some Morphological Traits as Defensive Mechanisms in Anurans. International Journal of Zoology 2, 1-12.
So far, I have had greatest success without specifying any packages in the preamble, and only using..:
\bibliographystyle{apalike}
\bibliography{references}
...in the end of my document.
However, it is not quite right, because in-text citations have square brackets and separate author from year with a comma. The bibliography looks all right, it only needs to not repeat the square-bracketed citation (as it appears in-text) at the beginning...
Please take pity and help.
@article{Toledo2009,
title = {{Colors and Some Morphological Traits as Defensive Mechanisms in Anurans}},
year = {2009},
journal = {International Journal of Zoology},
author = {Toledo, Luís Felipe and Haddad, Célio F. B.},
pages = {1--12},
volume = {2},
isbn = {1687-8477{\textbackslash}r1687-8485},
doi = {10.1155/2009/910892},
issn = {1687-8477},
pmid = {17969693}
}