PONE-D-20-17480

Predicting the effects of reservoir water level management on the reproductive output of a riparian songbird

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Green,

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.

Thank you for your patience as I  worked diligently to find reviewers for this work. Ultimately, one reviewer read the paper and found it interesting and potentially sound, but lacking some methodological details needed to fully vet it. I agree with these comments, and also with the suggestion to broaden the scope of the paper beyond implications for this one study site. I look forward to the revised submission.

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"Funding for this work came from National Science and Research Council Discovery grants to DJG (RGPIN 2009-261899, 2014-05798, 2019-05513) and EP (RGPIN-2016-04625) and a Columbia Basic Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program (http://fwcp.ca) grant to DJG (SPI 4639).  Fieldwork was also indirectly supported through a BC Hydro Water License Requirements contract to Cooper Beauchesne and Associates Ltd (CLBMON-36). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

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

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: I have reviewed the paper by Hepp et al. on predicting how flooding regimes affects yellow warbler productivity using an individual-based model. The paper is clearly written, although there were several methodological details that were missing for a complete understanding of the model and its results. I found the introduction to be informative and described previous literature, but the discussion could be broadened to discuss the implications of this research beyond the study site. More detailed comments are below.

Abstract:

- Third paragraph: (0.56 +/- xx)

METHODS:

In the section: “Breeding biology, daily nest survival rates and re-nesting probability”

“We evaluated whether clutch size…” - what were the models that you created here? Poisson regression for clutch size? Logistic regression for re-nesting? More detail is needed.

Why are you selecting the reservoir level randomly? Wouldn’t you want to have this be a deterministic variable? (Or is it sampling without replacement? Okay, yes it is - why random in that case? And how do you get to 50 years for Scenarios 2 and 3 if there are fewer than 50 years in the dataset?)

“Date, ground elevation and nest height are randomly chosen from a normal distribution, where the mean and SD are calculated from the monitoring data.” - please provide more information about these data and their collection. Did you collect these data from all monitored nests? This is an important variable for the model, and so it would be good to have more information on it. Is it possible that females altered their nest heights in response to reservoir conditions? In which case, it would make more sense to draw from a year-specific distribution of nest heights/elevations instead of a global distribution.

Where are the nest elevation data coming from?

Table 1: What is DOY?

Model validation and sensitivity:

- Why are you only validating Scenario 2? If anything, wouldn’t you want to validate Scenario 1, which represents the historical conditions? I’m also confused how this is really a validation. The output of the IBM is a direct consequence of the data put into it, there are no emergent properties. A validation would indicate that you withheld some data and are predicting it, but if so, then you need to describe this process.

- Where did this radiotelemetry data come from? Is this a separate dataset that you are using for validation?

- I’m confused by the equation of this section. Why are you comparing 1or2 and 3or4?

- Section needs more explanation for why sensitivity levels were chosen (e.g., 50% or 1%).

RESULTS:

- You need to provide methods for all tests (e.g., no methods described comparing ground elevation and date, and other F-stats in first paragraph).

- If so few nests failed from flooding (22/522 or 4%), why is flooding the main source of concern for nest failure?

Figure 2: It’s surprising to me that Scenario 3 would have lower median productivity than Scenario 1, seeing as Scenario 3 is just the “good years” from Scenario 1. Can you explain?

Also, what are the box plots showing (what are the box boundaries and “whiskers” indicating)?

Table 2: It is difficult to read this table due to formatting issues, not entirely clear which numbers go with which row.

Why is there a difference in the effect for number of fledglings vs. independent young? Do fledglings die from flooding? If so, this needs to be stated more clearly in the methods.

I appreciate the use of standardized coefficients, but I think it would be more useful to put the effects in terms of number of birds produced - a more intuitive difference in the scenario. You do this in the discussion, but I think those numbers should be put in the results.

DISCUSSION:

You discuss large differences in productivity among the scenarios, but Figure 2 indicates a lot of uncertainty around these estimates that makes it seem like they may not be all that different. Please discuss this uncertainty and what it means for your conclusions.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Predicting the effects of reservoir water level management on the reproductive output of a riparian songbird

PONE-D-20-17480R1

Dear Dr. Green,

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,

Matthew Shawkey

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thanks for your patience with the review process. I have reviewed the paper and replies, and do not think it is necessary to send it back out for review. The comments from the reviewer were helpful, and you addressed them well. Congratulations on the interesting paper.

Please make sure that the data used for parameter estimation is deposited in Dryad as soon as possible, and definitely before publication. 

Reviewers' comments: