Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionMay 16, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-14623 Powerline right-of-way management and flower-visiting insects: How vegetation management can promote pollinator diversity PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Russo, Thank you and your co-authors for submitting your manuscript to PLoS ONE. To adjudicate your manuscript, three reviewers were solicited, all three accepted the solicitation, and returned their reviews with great rapidity. Given the incredibly abnormal and increasingly absurd 2020 that we are enduring, I hope you’ll join me in commending the reviewers in their thoughtful and expedient adjudication of this manuscript. Despite differences in opinion with respect to a decision, with two arguing for minor revisions, one for rejection, the reviewer’s recommendations are largely consistent, and concurrent with my evaluation of this manuscript. Specifically, there is agreement that there is value to both these hard-won data and this research, and a desire to see it published. However, there are also consistent concerns both with the experimental design (i.e. lack of sufficient replication and attendant low statistical power) and a lack of clarity in many key details. The reviewers have graciously provided substantial and substantive comments and suggestions around these issues. And while two reviewers propose a decision of “minor revisions,” their comments, when combined with the third reviewer’s perspectives as well as my own impressions of the manuscript,argue for major revisions. Please carefully consider the reviewer comments; I think they provide a roadmap to an improved manuscript. Specifically, 1) consider providing additional clarity in the materials and methods to address perceived opacity, 2) address the issue of small sample size head-on by underscoring the limitations (and, by extension, not overinterpreting the results), and 3) consider a comprehensive revision to provide a more cohesive narrative. I look forward to seeing a revised version of this manuscript in the near future. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 14 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Mark A. Davis, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 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. Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure section: "This research was funded by and in collaboration with Penn State Altoona, Frost Entomological Museum, Penn State Extension, DOW Agro Industries, Asplundh, First Energy, and PECO Energy. L. Russo was funded by NSF grant (DMS-1313115) and a Marie Curie Fellowship (FOMN-705287)." We note that you received funding from commercial sources: DOW Agro Industries, Asplundh, First Energy, and PECO Energy. Please provide an amended Competing Interests Statement that explicitly states this commercial funder, along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, marketed products, etc. Within this Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your amended Competing Interests Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests 5. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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 Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: 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: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No ********** 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 ********** 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: Studies on best management practices of ROWs are an often-overlooked avenue of research and these land resources can be an important resource and corridor for many beneficial insects. High-quality identification of bee species like those in this study are wonderful to see – they can be a very difficult group to work on. It was also positive to see the addition of new state records and rare species in these spaces. This is a nice, straight-forward study, but I have several questions and comments on methodology that I hope can be clarified/detailed in the manuscript. LN67 – Change word order: “low volume basal herbicide” LN68 – Can you briefly describe the difference between basal and foliar herbicides? For example, I assume basal herbicide application was targeted, but I’m not sure how that compares to low- or high-volume foliar herbicide (broadcast spray?). Do you know which herbicides were used? Do you know if the amounts of active ingredients (concentrations) were consistent across herbicide treatments? LN81 – Was handling time included or excluded in terms of the two hours? LN86 – I believe it should be Sam Droege, not Samuel, as I do not think I have seen him use Samuel in his publications. LN91 – How long were bowls left out (I assume 24 hours)? Were they placed directly on the ground or mounted above ground or above the vegetation level? LN103 – What is the surrounding vegetation type? How far apart are each of the plots? How large are each of the plots? LN142 and LN170 – Perhaps one of the reasons your bowl survey abundance was low was because you mentioned that Bombus impatiens was one of the most common species you encountered and bumble bees are not caught frequently in bowls due to their large size (and might be more easily visually spotted for net collection). LN146 and 216 – Don’t know what the family of Heriades leavitti or Macropis ciliata is off the top of my head -- would be more consistent to label all families. LN229 – 231 – What herbicides were used? How soon after the application (month?) was your study started? Perhaps Bombus is more susceptible to sublethal effects of foliar herbicides (or their adjuvants)? There are a few studies showing impacts of some herbicides on honey bees and synergistic effects when exposed with other xenobiotics. Below are just a few references, but unfortunately most of these studies are confined to work on honey bees and only rarely are there studies on synthetic xenobiotics in Bombus. It would be very interesting if you could add herbicide identity as a factor in your model (but not necessary for this paper). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803880115 https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.117291 https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.109520 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40499 TableS3 – Table header indicates that numbers are “per ROW site”, it looks like these are numbers summed for each year. If I understand the requirements of PLOS Data Policy correctly -- with ROW site information it would allow for all of the underlying data to be present. Reviewer #2: Russo et al., present a comparison of flower-visiting bee and non-bee communities across 5 rights of way plots with 3 different herbicide treatments. The treatment plot with the highest herbicide application had decreased bee richness, but non-bee insect richness did not differ by herbicide treatments. Bee abundance differed between herbicide treatments, being higher in the “low volume basal” plot, but abundance of non-bees did not differ. NMDS suggested a stronger seasonal signal in flower-visiting insect communities than treatment plot. The authors conclude that rights of way may harbor high diversity of flower-visiting insects, and herbicide application does not negatively affect bee abundance. The resulting species list from sampling ROW habitats is valuable, as is the addition of insects to the state list. However, publication in PLoS One warrants a more robust study design, and more clearly presented objectives, methods, and results than the authors have included in their submission. My major comments are: 1. Objective 1 is better suited for a different audience. The authors state as the first of 2 objectives (line 75): “…establish baseline diversity of insect flower visitors in the ROW.” It is not clear what “baseline diversity” is, nor the significance of it for the study. Perhaps the authors wish to document or describe the species collected in ROW plots. The effort toward collecting and identifying over 3000 insects is admirable and the resulting species list is a strength of the manuscript. However, this information may be more appropriate for a journal focused on regional faunas or descriptive data, and I encourage the authors to consider submission to such a venue. 2. I do not think the design is sufficiently robust to make conclusions on the effects of herbicide application on abundance and richness of insect communities. To address the second objective (“…compare the current management strategies to determine which has the potential to best support long-term pollinator diversity”), the abundance and diversity of flower-visiting insects are analyzed across 5 plots of 3 treatment types. I am sympathetic to the challenges inherent in large survey efforts of insects which often lead to smaller sample sizes due to trade-offs in how sampling is stratified across space and time. Nevertheless, the authors do not provide much description or context on the different plots beyond a categorical name and a liter/hectare amount of herbicide application. The significance of “basal” vs “foliar” is not explained (though I am assuming it has to do with how the herbicide was applied). Furthermore, although the study is cast as a comparison of management strategies, we are not provided background or context on these strategies in terms of how or why they are applied. Below I have included some general comments by section. Intro: The introduction is a good foundation yet very short and missing details which would enhance the rationale of the study. For example, more background context on powerline rights-of-way, how prevalent or widespread they are, the significance of early successional habitat for bees and other flower-visiting insects would enhance the study set-up. The addition of the research questions in this section would also improve the Introduction. Materials and Methods: The first paragraph discusses treatment types by name, but it is not clear to me the significance of “high volume basal,” etc. How were plots distributed within the ROW? Were they separated? Distances between them? Did you cover the same extent of each plot or walk transects? Were multiple people collecting in the same plot at the same time? How did you select which flowers to target for sampling? Each plot was sampled 4 times May through August- was that once per month? More detail on the pan traps would be helpful, for example the purpose of multiple colors (for a non-entomological readership). Pan traps were placed between 2 plots- which ones and why? Why not place these within the net-sampled plots to potentially collect additional taxa? Line 97 states they were placed in an area with a similar background plant community, but it is not clear which plot or plot plant communities it is similar to. Results: In general, the Results section is hard to follow and does not flow well. Summary tables comparing richness and abundance values across plots and of the model results would be helpful additions to the manuscript. I do not think figure captions were included with the submission. Figure 2 is very confusing. Discussion: Some of the beginning Discussion information would be helpful in the Introduction. Highlight the main findings of the study early on in this section. Additional supporting literature would help put the results of this study in context of what others have found. The argument is made that ROW harbor diversity of these groups, but how do the richness and abundance values per plot compare to other studies? It can be difficult to compare across studies due to sampling effort, however the reader has no metric for assessing high diversity or abundance. Reviewer #3: Review Russo et al. Power line ROWs and pollinator diversity This study attempts to draw some general inferences about the diversity of bee and non-bee pollinators visiting flowers in managed experimental ROW plots. Although the experimental design has very little replication, and the explanatory variable (liters/hectare of applied herbicide) is not populated evenly across the range of variation, there are still valuable insights from this work that could be useful to other researchers. This paper could be strengthened by a analysis of the conservation value of each taxon (e.g. Natureserv G or S rankings) as another response variable to compare among the treatments. The interesting fact that several new distributional records were attained during this study speaks to knowledge gaps in the distribution of bee species in Pennsylvania; elaborating on these results in order to put these collections into regional or state context would improve the utility of this study. 126 bee species were observed, but how many were expected? This is a difficult question to answer and I’m not suggesting the authors should spend a great deal of time coming up with and justifying an expected species richness, but I am saying that a brief framing of these results in the context of the state and/or regional and local species pools would be useful pieces of information. Although the study infers that herbicide treatments have effects on the plant community, which then drive differences among the pollinator community visiting the flower assemblages during sampling periods, differences in the similarity and composition of the plant communities themselves are not explored. Plant species richness is proposed as a correlate of bee species richness, but the identity of plant species that are common and privately exclusive to the treatments is not discussed. Some mention of pollinator preference or specificity is given as an ad hoc hypothesis explaining results (line 250) but these data could be used to test such a hypothesis. This testable hypothesis is that (line 250) is that rare bee species might be more sensitive to increasing herbicide applications because herbicides may remove less common plant species. As mentioned above, no analysis of plant assemblages was provided but this hypothesis could at least be supported indirectly by evidence that plant species rare at low volumes herbicide applications are the species that are dropping out of the assemblage at higher volumes. Another testable hypothesis, which is raised (line 171) but not tested, is that the significant difference in LVB bee abundance (wrt LVF and HVF) is a function of Bombus impatiens. A simple way to demonstrate that this species is driving this pattern is to remove this species from the analysis and compare abundance among plots. Below I have some specific comments given with line numbers. Line 98-100: The bees from the bowl surveys are presented without analysis, but it would be very interesting to know if these bees were more rare (higher imperilment ranking) than bees from the treatment plots. Additionally, the above comments about putting these collections into context with some treatment of the regional or state level fauna would really add meaning to these numbers. Lines 143- 147: See above, discussion of particular taxa devoid of ancillary data on species conservation value or life history could be enhanced Line 157: This result cites Figure 1 incorrectly (bee abundance and richness correlation is given in Table S4 but not Figure 1) Line 163: There are several instances (see also 174 and 181) of the claim “significantly lower AIC”, this is misleading at best. The use of “significant” here may imply to a naïve reader that there is a hypothesis test comparing the AIC values, but that would be incorrect. I recommend that this language be modified perhaps as “Models including the categorical treatments as a fixed effect were more parsimonious than the continuous liters/ha herbicide usage as a fixed effect models”. Line 167: A table of parameter estimates, confidence intervals and AIC scores would be very helpful to guide the reader through this section. Line 176: cite of Figure 2 at end of Line 178 is in the wrong place, should be cited at the end of statistics in Line 176 Line 181: Table S6 indicates that the confidence intervals for LVF overlap with each of the other treatments. Line 189: Again the discussion of taxonomic diversity would be greatly enhanced with some analysis or representation of the local and regional species pool. Data on how many species were collected are hard to place into the proper context without some idea of how many bees (or non-bees) would be expected from such surveys, or how many exist in the region as a hole. Line 238: the phrasing here is awkward and might be improved by striking “bee community more changeable over time” and replacing with something like “the phenological trajectory is stronger than treatment effects. Line 244- 247: Perfect opportunity to discuss ordination and analysis of plant assemblage data. Line 249: This passage is unclear, whether singletons are singletons from the ENTIRE dataset of observations or singletons from a SITE or treatment. How many singletons were in each, and total? ********** 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: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No [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.] 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. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-20-14623R1 Powerline right-of-way management and flower-visiting insects: How vegetation management can promote pollinator diversity PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Russo Thank you for your revised submission, and I hope that you'll accept my deepest apologies for the delayed decision. Two reviewers were solicited to review, both agreed, and both provided timely, insightful reviews. However I had a number of challenges that delayed my recommendation. I hope you can appreciate that these are unusual times and will grant me some latitude. Nevertheless, the reviewers are in agreement and I concur that the revisions made have substantially improved the manuscript, and I commend you and your coauthors for your diligence. Both reviewers identify a few, largely cosmetic issues remaining in this manuscript. If you would consider those recommendations, resubmit with a response detailing changes made and/or justification/clarification for rejected recommendations, I will move to accept this manuscript without further peer review. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 07 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Mark A. Davis, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 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: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 ********** 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 ********** 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 want to thank the authors for addressing each of my previous comments in their revision. I also appreciate the inclusion of the map – it really helped me understand the layout of this study. I feel strongly that these findings are important to publish. Realistic management recommendations from ecologists for the preservation of insect diversity are few and far between. My primary comment relates to the layout of Fig. 2, I am a bit confused. Is the legend indicating that F2 had a greater herbicide usage than SF2, or are they only ranked by category? Is there a reason that Fig 1 groups each site within the category (LVB, LVF, HVF) but Fig 2 separates each site? Very minor comments follow -- LN184 – I think this should be Simpson, not Simpson’s LN339-340 – Near identical sentence used in introduction (LN45-47). (“…traverse a wide array of habitats and landscapes”) Several sections could be rewritten to be clearer and potentially more succinct – LN296-299 (perhaps refer to supplementary data or include in treatment in species list LN294-295) and LN321-324 LN410-411 – Pollen predators is not a term I have seen used before – I assume it means pollen-feeding insects, but was not sure if it somehow included sit-and-wait predators. Reviewer #2: Russo et al. address powerline Right-of-Ways (ROW) as habitat for flower-visiting insects. They describe species richness and abundance of bees and non-bees in relation to increasing volume per hectare application of herbicide and specific application type across 5 experimental plots in a managed ROW. In addition to identifying new records from Pennsylvania, they captured approximately 29 percent of the known bee species in the state. Flower-visiting insects were abundant with high richness at low levels of herbicide application, however bee species richness was negatively affected by higher levels of herbicide application. The authors conclude powerline ROW can be important habitat for bees and other flower-visiting insects. Thank you for the opportunity to review the resubmission of the manuscript. I have some minor comments and suggestions for the authors below. Introduction Nice job reorganizing this section and including background information on ROW. Lines 66-70: Suggestion for slight change of wording from research questions to objective statements- “Our research objectives were to 1) assess species richness of flower-visiting bee and non-bee insects in the Vegetation Research and Demonstration Project at SGL33, 2) determine the effect of increasing herbicide application on flower-visiting insect abundance and species richness within a powerline ROW, and 3) address how long-term vegetation management affects the distribution of flower-visiting insects in a powerline ROW.” Methods The additional detail on sampling methods and treatment types was very helpful. The abbreviations for low volume basal (LVB), etc, could be introduced here as they are then used in the Results section. Lines 102-116: I’m not sure reiterating objectives and questions here is necessary and these two paragraphs could be eliminated. Lines 155-157: A few additional details on how plant diversity was measured and a reference could be included. Results This section is much easier to follow. Figure S1. The map and schematic of the sampling plots helped me to visualize the study. Consider moving it to the main body of paper. Figure 1 (and Figure S3). I know there are different schools of thought on this, however showing raw abundance data as opposed to the log-transformed values used in the analysis would be more meaningful to the reader. Displaying raw abundance data would also keep consistency with Figure 2, in which richness data were log-transformed for the GLMM analysis but graphed as raw richness values. Figure 2. To make the figure less busy and emphasize the point, you might graph litres/ha herbicide on the x axis (more informative than the plot names) against bee species richness with a second panel bar graph of plant richness, then eliminate the color in the bars. I recognize showing the x axis as continuous data may be tricky to make work visually. Alternatively, perhaps add an arrow along the x axis denoting increasing litres/ha of herbicide application. Are the outliers discussed in the text? Figure 3. The caption is out of order in the text. The y axis is confusing. Should the label be “Number of Species”? Discussion The intro paragraph of this section makes a nice point for the role of ROWs as habitat in the context of species richness. I think the authors could also briefly highlight the strength of their sampling regime of morning and afternoon surveys across the active season and the implications for richness and abundance measures of flower-visiting insects. Lines 363-367: I think the patterns driven by these two species is interesting. B. impatiens and A. melifera are known to be highly abundant locally. Any suggestions for why this may have been the case in your study? Proximity to nest locations or floral density? Perhaps the presence of a particularly abundant floral resource in these plots at the time plant richness was surveyed? Artifact of sample size? ********** 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 [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.] 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. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 2 |
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Powerline right-of-way management and flower-visiting insects: How vegetation management can promote pollinator diversity PONE-D-20-14623R2 Dear Dr. Russo, 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- 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. Kind regards, Mark A. Davis, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-20-14623R2 Powerline right-of-way management and flower-visiting insects: How vegetation management can promote pollinator diversity Dear Dr. Russo: I'm 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 let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Mark A. Davis Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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