Detection and density of breeding marsh birds in Iowa wetlands

Rachel A. Vanausdall; Stephen J. Dinsmore

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227825

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 22, 2019
28 Oct 2019 Decision Letter - Maura (Gee) Geraldine Chapman, Editor PONE-D-19-26684 Detection and density of breeding marsh birds in Iowa wetlands PLOS ONE Dear Vanausdall, 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. Your paper should be acceptable subject to the revisions raised by the reviewer. I am sorry that I could not find further reviewers to look at your paper. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Dec 12 2019 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. 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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, Maura (Gee) Geraldine Chapman, PhD DSc Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In your Methods section, please provide additional location information of the study sites, including geographic coordinates for the data set if available. 3. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why. 4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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: I thought the paper was well written, informative work that could have some impact for future studies. The methods section: Line 110 - you may want to define what palustrine / lacustrine systems are - mentioned several times but I didn't see a definition for the terms. Is it a difference in water regime, wetland size, water depth? Veg community different? What are the native vegetation communities for the wetlands you studied - what is the goal for restoration? You mentioned restoration processes for the small lakes (removing fish, removing water structures, mimicking natural water regimes) and allowing a 2 year period for vegetation to reestablish - is the type of vegetation important? Could this have had some impact on detection for secretive marsh birds (eg - least bittern have a different habitat preference than sora or viginia rail)? The changes in vegetation community is mentioned several times, but there isn't really any explanation as to what that community is. A brief explanation of what a successful restoration looks like could be helpful here. Was distance to roads taken into account when you established your survey points, or was the effect of disturbance from traffic negligible? At line 402 you mention the development of sedge meadow and wet prairie habitat near the edges of the shallow lakes as a positive for the bird communities - are these common for restored shallow lakes in Iowa? Overall - good paper, I think the issues I found were very minor, and it could be published without too many changes. ****** 6. 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: Yes: Eric D Wilson [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.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. 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Revision 1
2 Dec 2019 Author Response Editor’s comments 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In your Methods section, please provide additional location information of the study sites, including geographic coordinates for the data set if available. Response: We included a list of the 30 shallow lakes, along with the county and UTM coordinates. These were included as supplementary material (S1 Table). 3. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why. Response: Technically, we are not required to have any permits for this work because we were not handling birds. Our general bird work is authorized under USGS Bird Banding Permit #23285 to Stephen J. Dinsmore. We included a statement at the end of the “Bird surveys” section that states: “Because we were not handling birds, we were not required to have approval by the Iowa State University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.” 4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. Response: We will deposit our data in Iowa State University’s DataShare if the publication is accepted. Reviewer 1 Comments I thought the paper was well written, informative work that could have some impact for future studies. Response: We appreciate this statement. The methods section: Line 110 - you may want to define what palustrine / lacustrine systems are - mentioned several times but I didn't see a definition for the terms. Is it a difference in water regime, wetland size, water depth? Veg community different? Response: Thank you for these comments and questions. We defined the terms palustrine and lacustrine in the Study Area section. Based on Cowardin et al. (1979), one of the biggest differences between these is the presence or absence of vegetation. Lacustrine wetlands generally lack vegetation, while palustrine wetlands are characterized by hydrophytes. What are the native vegetation communities for the wetlands you studied - what is the goal for restoration? You mentioned restoration processes for the small lakes (removing fish, removing water structures, mimicking natural water regimes) and allowing a 2 year period for vegetation to reestablish - is the type of vegetation important? Could this have had some impact on detection for secretive marsh birds (eg - least bittern have a different habitat preference than sora or viginia rail)? The changes in vegetation community is mentioned several times, but there isn't really any explanation as to what that community is. A brief explanation of what a successful restoration looks like could be helpful here. Response: We included more explanation on the vegetation community and the meaning of restoration success in the introduction. Specifically, we further described vegetation characteristics of prairie shallow lakes and how they can be impacted by hydrological fluctuations, invasive fish species, and excessive nutrient loading. We also emphasized the meaning of a successful restoration based on work by other researchers. Was distance to roads taken into account when you established your survey points, or was the effect of disturbance from traffic negligible? Response: We did not take into account distance to roads. We believe disturbance from roads was negligible because most of the roads near these shallow lakes were either (a) dead-end access roads to the wetland, or (b) rural roads that were not heavily used. At line 402 you mention the development of sedge meadow and wet prairie habitat near the edges of the shallow lakes as a positive for the bird communities - are these common for restored shallow lakes in Iowa? Response: The presence of sedge meadow and wet prairie habitat was not quantified, as most of our surveys were completed away from shallow lake edges. However, the authors and observers did notice a greater abundance and presence of such habitat while completing these surveys. We clarified this in the discussion. Overall - good paper, I think the issues I found were very minor, and it could be published without too many changes. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-19-26684_Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227825.r002
31 Dec 2019 Decision Letter - Maura (Gee) Geraldine Chapman, Editor Detection and density of breeding marsh birds in Iowa wetlands PONE-D-19-26684R1 Dear Dr. Vanausdall, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, Maura (Gee) Geraldine Chapman, PhD DSc Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227825.r003
Formally Accepted
15 Jan 2020 Acceptance Letter - Maura (Gee) Geraldine Chapman, Editor PONE-D-19-26684R1 Detection and density of breeding marsh birds in Iowa wetlands Dear Dr. Vanausdall: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Maura (Gee) Geraldine Chapman Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227825.r004

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