PONE-D-19-25939

Trends of the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) rehabilitation admissions 1991-2017.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ball,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

I have read with interest this MS and agree with the reviewers that this is an important MS with important information for the conservation of Manatees, which are threatened worldwide. Please address all comments satisfactorily, especially the questions by reviewer 1 and 3, while integrating those of reviewer 2 on statistics. Also put the MS into a wider context, drawing examples from other regions. I am looking forward to reading a revised version.

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Ismael Aaron Kimirei, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In the paper “Trends of the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) rehabilitation admissions 1991-2017”, the authors use basic statistics to describe the trends in rehabilitation admissions of Florida manatee during almost three decades. Private zoo’s and aquariums play an important role in sirenians’ rescue and rehabilitation around the world, but there are few attempts to understand the impact of these actions on manatee conservation. This paper is very valuable to measure the role of one of these facilities to preserve Florida manatees, and can be replicated for others facilities of the same nature. This paper also shows that manatee rescue is relevant as a way to monitor threats on manatees along the time, which is very important for manatee management, specially regarding anthropogenic risks. Therefore, I consider this paper suitable to be published in PlosOne. However, the manuscript needs improvements before being considered as publishable, as following:

Materials and Methods

- The authors need to be clearer in the categorization of causes of admission. Please consider including a table separating and clearly describing each of them. What are the natural causes of death and how they were diagnosed as such?. What are the other human causes? Etc.

Results

- Although table 2 shows in a very general way the location of the rescues, it would be interesting to also present a map showing the origin of all the cases to understand the regional impact of the rescue actions.

- It is necessary to present the outcome of the rescue actions, what are the percentages of manatees deceased, released, kept in captivity (indefinitely or temporary at the moment of the paper elaboration etc). This will help the reader to understand the proportion of individuals that have been saved, and how rescue programs have a positive impact on manatee mortality.

- Fig 5 and 6 show almost the same information, I suggest to delete fig 5.

Discussion

- Please include a paragraph emphasizing the importance of manatee rescue centers not only for Florida, but also for other manatee populations around the world.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript has important data on Florida manatees admitted for rehabilitation for a period of almost two decades. Analysis of these data is crucially important to identify proper conservation actions for the subspecies.

Although the subject importance, major revision is necessary to improve the manuscript. First, the authors should provide proper statistical analyses, so adequate comparisons can be performed. Second, important improvements are necessary in Discussion section. There are no comparisons of the results obtained in this study with other obtained in Florida or other countries. I strongly recommend to the author to include in this manuscript data on the outcomes.

Reviewer #3: Dear Author,

The article "Trends in Florida Manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) rehabilitation admissions 1991-2017" is well-structured and presents interesting findings, with potential to support the rescue and rehabilitation program outcomes analysis. The results and discussion are clearly presented and are supported by available data. The article is well written and easy to understand.

The statistical analyses have been carried out in an appropriate manner. However, the results presented in table 3 could be discussed even if no significant correlation was found. Also, an inconsistency was identified between the data presented in rows 124 and 125 and in figure 2 (percentage of natural cause admissions and watercraft collisions). The information needs to be corrected.

Its also important to discuss if the findings corroborate the results of the carcass recovery program. Are the percentages of admission categories close to those seen in the carcass recovery? Or the rehabilitation program is being able to reduce mortality in any specific categories?

As contributions to improve the conservation outcome of the paper, I would suggest that the author's try to answer two questions: (i) is there a relation between admission categories and mortality in the rehabilitation facility?;(ii) are the number and frequency of use of watercraft increasing through the time or the trends in admission are only related to the manatee population growth?

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Delma Nataly Castelblanco-Martínez

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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PONE-D-19-25939R1

Trends of the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) rehabilitation admissions 1991-2017.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ball,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR: The manuscript has improved a lot. There are a few edits (suggested by Reviewer 3) and some minor comments on the 5-year groupings, the stats and their meaning, and including a management statement as suggested by reviewer2. Please address these or submit a rebuttal of the same. I am looking forward to reading your revised manuscript sooner.

==============================

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by May 15 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ismael Aaron Kimirei, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I believe the authors addressed all my comments in the new version of the MS, or explained sufficiently in the responses to reviewers- I only wanted to add that there is a phrase that seems to be repeated in the same paragraph (lines 95 and 101), please check it, and delete one of them.

95 Rehabilitated orphaned manatees must obtain 200cm before being qualified for release.

101 Calves undergoing rehabilitation must be 200cm before being considered for release.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors, your manuscript has important data on Florida manatee rehabilitation admissions. This kind of information is rare on scientific journals and I would like to congratulate you all for all the effort. I uploaded a document with all my comments and suggestions.

First, I suggest you to re-write some parts of your abstract, inserting some important data obtained in your study. I also believe you need to review your 5-year blocks. The blocks did not have the same time, mainly first and the last one. The first has 53 months, the last block has 82 months, and the other blocks have 60 months. It is difficult to compare the number of admittance in these years-blocks if they are so different.

Although I understand and respect your choice to maintain the statistical analyses, I did not understand what was your goal with this analysis, and I did not understand the results of it. I am not a statistic specialist, but I believe that I should be able to understand the results of your test, but I did not. Thus, even if you choose to maintain this logistic regression analysis, I suggest you to explain it and the results. In lines 158-159 you described “The two dominant causes of admission, natural and watercraft were then compared to each other and are summarized in Table 3.” However, when I look the table I see a different approach. It looks like you are comparing variables to see if you find any variable with more risk involved in admissions, like “Do adults have more chance to be admitted than calves?” and “Do females have more chance to be admitted than males”? Am I right? If I am, how are you comparing natural and watercraft categories here?

I also would like to see some kind of recommendations in your discussion. If watercraft admissions are increasing, what kind of improvement do you need in your rehabilitation facilities? As you verified a strong seasonal variation in watercraft and natural cause admissions, what kind of preparations are necessary in each one of these periods. I believe that before watercraft season starts you need to be prepare to perform image exams, have specific medications to treat severe wounds, etc. While natural causes, treatments are different and need other approach and preparations.

Reviewer #3: Dr. Ball,

Thanks for addressing all my comments in this reviewed version of the manuscript. I believe this paper can contribute significantly to manatees conservation in the US, specially to the rehabilitation and carcass recovery program.

Please, seriously consider publishing a new paper focusing on the outcomes of the rehabilitation program.

Best regards,

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Iran Campello Normande

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-19-25939_R1_comments.pdf

Trends of the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) rehabilitation admissions 1991-2017.

PONE-D-19-25939R2

Dear Dr. Ball,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Ismael Aaron Kimirei, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I have enjoyed reading the revised version and think the reviewers' concerns were adequately  addressed. Please check all grammatical and spelling mistakes that remain. For example, "long term" should be a one word "long-term" (LN 217)

Reviewers' comments: