https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3317-0239
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionApril 25, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-11590 Population structure and body condition assessment to inform conservation strategies for a small isolated Asian elephant population in southwest China PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shi, 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. Please, pay attention to all the comments from reviewers, both of them have done an exhaustive and positive work. Pay especial attention to comments of reviewer #2. This reviewer ask for improvement of grammar to enhance the information delivering. The methodology has missing information. Third, the discussion has too many speculative elements that are not supported by the results. Furthermore, the argumentation in the discussion is not always clear, which leaves the reader unsatisfied or unconvinced. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 03 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, Paulo Corti, 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. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. 3. We note that Figure 1 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:
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The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ [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: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: No ********** 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: GENERAL Overall a well-written and interesting study. Though I am unfamiliar with the SECR methodology, it is described in good detail. There are, however, a few extra details that the methods require for clarity, particularly in relation to the body condition scores (BCS). Results set out the basic demographics of this isolated population, and the conservation recommendations are clear. SPECIFIC COMMENTS - On line 220, the buffer zone is said to be 5km around the outermost camera sites. There was no citation here, so what was the justification for using 5km and not a different value? - Lines 245-246 Please list all the model covariates and provide some description e.g. was age a categorical factor in the models? Was BCS considered as a continuous variable for the purposes of getting the correlation coefficients? - It is unclear how many photographs were used to calculate the scores for each elephant. If multiple, were they all from around the same time and consistent? If the score is an average or not needs to be stated. - Lines 285-287 Asian elephants may allolactate (Rapaport, L. & Haight, J. 1987 Some observations regarding allomaternal caretaking among captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). J. Mammal. 68, 438–442), and there may be other forms of allomothering too (Lahdenperä M., Mar, K.U., Lummaa V. 2016 Nearby grandmother enhances calf survival and reproduction in Asian elephants. Scientific Reports 6: 27213; Lynch E. C., Lummaa, V., Htut W., Lahdenperä M. 2019 Evolutionary significance of maternal kinship in a long-lived mammal. Phil. Trans. R. Soc B. 374: 20180067) – I’m not sure that any relationship can be considered ‘definite’ Reviewer #2: General comments This study presents interesting information on a very tiny, endangered population of Asian elephants. The authors take advantage of movement-triggered cameras to get a wealth of information about this population, namely its size, structure, and a crude estimate of individual health. They get robust estimates of the populations thanks to the fact that the population seems completely isolated (and is small), and by using a state-of-the-art statistical method. However, the manuscript suffers from several problems that should and can be attended without too much difficulty. First, I must mention that some parts of the manuscript are difficult to read because of the way sentences are written. Sometimes it is clear that a single sentence should have been split in two to make sense, but in other opportunities, it was almost impossible to know what was meant. I suggest the authors carefully review the manuscript and ask a fluent English speaker knowledgeable in the field to revise the English (disclaimer: English is not my first language and I always ask a native speaker to revise, there is no shame in that). Second, the methodology has missing information or is not very clear in many parts. Third, the discussion has too many speculative elements that are not supported by the results. Furthermore, the argumentation in the discussion is not always clear, which leaves the reader unsatisfied or unconvinced. I believe that by restructuring the discussion and reducing it to the essential information supported by your results would improve its clarity. In conclusion, in my opinion this is a piece that deserves publication by providing key information on a small endangered population based on a technique now readily available to most organisations in charge of conservation. As such it exemplifies how this tool can be used to inform managers. Specific comments Here I list the comments I have done in the manuscript. I have also made a large number of suggestions of corrections directly in the manuscript, which I sent to the Associate Editor as they would not appear in the pdf version produced by the system in Editorial Manager. L. 34: Insert BCS here for the first time. L. 36: The fact that individuals had such low BCS should be highlighted in the abstract (if space allows). L. 44: End the sentence at “dispersal” and start a new sentence about elephants as umbrella species. L. 49: When you mention that the species is listed as Endangered in IUCN Red List, and then that its population is decreasing, you make a tautological argument. Any endangered population is decreasing. You should rather change the sentence and say that however important it is for conservation (as an umbrella species and an ecosystem engineer), there is a problem with the species, which population is decreasing, hence justifying its endangered status. L. 77: Puma is not a good example, as they do not have spots or stripes. I would also keep this list more general, citing genera that have spots or stripes, such as tigers, leopards, giraffes, etc. L. 88: There is a jump between the two sentences (no logical sequence). Maybe you could close the previous argument by saying that for NNNR there are not such data available. Then you could start a new paragraph on this isolated population, its genetic status, etc. L. 99-108: This new paragraph also makes a jump. You should place it in the series of paragraphs describing how trap cameras (and photographs more broadly) are another way that tool can be useful in conservation and management. L. 104-105: It is unclear why BCS is most meaningful “especially [in] small isolated populations”. Explain it or delete it. L. 107-108. Delete this sentence. It is of very little relevance for a journal with a broad, worldwide audience. L. 109-116: There is one more reason to move the previous paragraph upward: this paragraph is connected to the one preceding the previous one (i.e., after the paragraph l. 82-98). L. 114-115: “for the development of a successful project focusing on the introduction of individual elephants from other populations”. That is the kind of sentence that does not serve you well. You talk about introducing individuals, but you have provided no evidence that the conditions to ensure the survival of introduced animals are met in the area. In many areas, habitat (quantity or quality) or negative relationships with humans do not ensure survival, making the prospect of reintroduction a loosing strategy. L. 120: I would change “to analyze the factors” to reflect that it is indeed a discussion of some factors that might have affected the population that you will present. L. 122: Why in China only and not in other parts of the species distribution? L. 134: Give properly the geographical coordinates (including N to the latitude, and W to the longitude). L. 137: Please give a proper annual precipitation and temperature (a single value), or explain the range you provide. L. 138: Why natural in “natural tropical forest”? L. 140: By evergreen vegetation do you mean evergreen broadleaf species, in opposition to coniferous species? L. 148: Use a better title, such as survey design or camera trap set-up. L. 151: “along the animal trails with forest gaps where there were signs of elephants”. Unclear. Did you set up the cameras in forest gaps that were crossed by elephant trails? If so replace “with” by “in”. In any case, review this. L. 152: “as well as other activities”. You cannot remain vague here; mention them all. L. 152: Explain why you avoided certain areas. Was it because elephants do not use them, or because you had concerns for the safety of people in the field? L. 149-164: In this section, there is information missing. As far as I understand you had one camera per site, but one sentence mentions that "at each site, camera traps were operated...", which suggests there were several cameras at each site. Also, there is information missing regarding the number of sites or cameras, the minimum distance that could separate two sites (because there could be spatial autocorrelation in your data). Finally, you should mention the camera model(s) you used in your study. Elephants are not small nor super fast, so trigger time should not be an issue, but still, getting information on the material used is necessary for replication purposes. L. 166-169: The whole sentence needs to be rewritten for better clarity. After reading it, I am left with doubt about what constituted an independent event. I think I understood that an independent event could include several photographs of various individuals, with at least 5 h between such photographic sequences to make it temporally independent, but it is far from clear. L. 177: Did you determine the sex in juveniles and calves? If so, how did you do that? L. 185-187: How do you know they did not change? Ear can be teared at any moment; a tusk could be broken digging up... maybe it is the way it is written that makes it not very convincing. If you have an elephant with a particular tear in the ear, it is easy to "recapture" it, but if there was no marking, I am not sure how this could be reliable. I think a better explanation would help. Table 1: 1) Regarding sexing, as mentioned earlier I think male and female should be labeled properly adult female and adult male, as the diagnostic characteristics are found in adult (and possibly subadult) individuals only. 2) “Sunken prominence”. How can a prominence be sunken? 3) Your classes for tusk length are ok, but I am not ok with the fact that you do not explain how you classified them in each of these categories. I am sure you had a criteria to decide (such as tusk length relative to the trunk). L. 197: “The movement pattern of individuals activity center in study area”. This is unclear. Do you mean “The movement pattern of individual activity centers in the study area”, i.e., the movement pattern of the activity centers of a given individual evaluated at different times (sessions)? Sorry, but the devil is in the details! L. 198-200: "the probability of detecting an individual at a particular detector (…) to the distance of the detector" makes no sense. Please rewrite. L. 206 and elsewhere in this section: Use trap or detector, or explain that detectors are traps, but remain consistent throughout your explanations. L. 217: Again, there is a problem with the phrasing and it is unclear what you mean. L. 219-221: The whole sentence needs to be rephrased so that the reader can understand exactly what you did. Also “from the outermost x and y coordinates of the camera sites” is very unclear. A camera site is not a discrete point in space??? L. 224: Again, this is unclear. Is the file named "Capture histories"? Please check the sentence. L. 225: Is it "occasion" (you haven't defined it previously) or "event"? Also, earlier you defined individual events as being separated by at least 5 hours. This means that several individual events could occur on a same day. How can your database account for that if your time unit is "day"? L. 227: “whole data as five different sessions”. Again, it is unclear. Do you mean you divided your 4-month sampling period in 5 (i.e. each session would last 24 days)? L. 236-244: The first of these five sentences is very unclear. Further, if you followed the method developed by 49 or 50, just cite them, and mention that the part on which the scoring focuses are the ribs, shoulders, etc. and say why. Usually it is because these parts can accumulate fat. L. 244: Before mentioning which software you used to perform your analyses, say what kind of analysis you performed. L. 244-245: Which type of correlation coefficient? L. 245: “ratios of various covariates”: why ratios? Age is not a ratio, nor is sex or the solitary vs group status. L. 246: “whether an individual was present or not in the herd”. Here you lost me... do you mean you checked the correlation between BCS and whether an individual was solitary or in herd? (note that this is not what you have written; you have written “the herd”) Table 2: 1) Revise the title of this table. 2) Characters is incorrect here and in several places in the manuscript. The correct word here is characteristics. L. 250-253: This is much better suited in Methods. I kept wondering how you set up your cameras, how many, and here is the answer. Yours results should start with what you obtained, not what you did. L. 254: You never spoke of video before! Fix that in Methods or delete here if they were not used. L. 261-264: You should revise that sentence. As it is, there is not much difference between the individual that was seen the least and the others. Rather give the mean and the range. Fig. 2: This title does not correspond to what you describe in the text (i.e., the 12 identified individuals). I think it should say something like "Asian elephants individually identified in NNNR park, China”. Also, note that the way you cited the figure, one would expect to see the 12 individuals identified. Here you show only half of them. Table 3: 1) Put “No” in the column for Tusk for each female. This is all the more important that you later discuss the fact that you might have misclassified some individuals. 2) Put “Herd” in each file for individuals AE01 to AE08. L. 272-279: This is interesting, but falls out of the scope of the section (Individual identification). L. 283-284: This sentence is not built correctly, and it is unclear what the 1:1 ratio stands for (is it a sex ratio too?). Also, as I mentioned previously, the way you mentioned the criteria for sexing seemed to refer to sexually mature individuals only, so I wonder how you determined sex in juvenile individuals, if the 1:1 ratio is indeed a sex ratio. This needs to be clarified in the methods too! L. 285: What are “containment relationship family units”? Table 4: In the title you mention five sessions, but in the table there are only four sessions, one for each sampled month. L. 306-307: This is the definition of the median!!!!! Please, take this out, or give the mean and here you could assess how skewed the distribution is. L. 311-312: Say which sex had the highest BCI. Rephrase “solitary or not” (being in a herd or solitary), and explain which status was associated with having a lower or higher BCS. Figure 3: The figure does not help much, and a table would probably be more efficient here. Table 5: For the adult individual that died in 2003, how can you know “it died for its ivory”? Was it killed (with bullets inside the body)? You could find an individual with the tusks removed post-mortem. L. 337-341: This is definitely not of interest for the readership of PLoS One. L. 343: Use a reference to justify the link you make between the population structure and its future. L. 343-345: Rephrase that sentence (self contradiction the way it is written), and note that this sentence contradicts the previous one (speaks of a possibly stable population, when earlier you say that it indicates a decline). L. 345-346: This sentence comes out of the blue. Link it to an argument. You can actually use it to finish the following sentence with this argument of inbreeding depression in small populations. L. 351-352: Again, a sentence out of the blue, which has no direct link with your results. What argument do you want to discuss in this paragraph? Start with that, and then develop the argument. L. 355: Why do you say even if it was 1:1.5? L. 359: Ref. 72 is not about balance in sex ratio in Asian elephant, it is about a sexing method. Make sure it is appropriate to cite it. L. 360-361: In this sentence you refer to tuskless males, but who identified these tuskless males? If it is another study, cite it. L. 366: “116 individual deaths (…) might account for tuskless males”. It is unclear here what you mean. L. 360-370: I find all this difficult to follow because of some problems of clarity, but above all, you discuss a point when you recognize that you do not know for sure if the tuskless individuals you identified were males or females! L. 379: Add at the end of that sentence that this is especially true due to birth intervals. L. 398-399: OK, but the way you present it by comparing to India leaves the reader with the idea that these authors (ref 79) did the study over a short period of time. Was this the case, if not, why discuss this and in that way? This is very troubling. L. 401: This value (800 m distance) makes sense only if we have an idea of elephant activity areas and movements. L. 404: Not real, but actual. It is still based on what you captured on photographs. L. 405: estimated by whom? Because your sentences are not well linked, it is hard to follow. L. 408: About carrying capacity: well, you said before that 40 years ago the estimate was of 20 individuals, so at 12 it is obvious that you are below (even if we don't know if 20 was at carrying capacity or not). L. 394-410: All this paragraph is convoluted. Why make weird assumptions (two sentences above) if you know that the population has already been that size. L. 415-418: Rewrite these two sentences, and put what is a result in the corresponding section. L. 422-424: So what? Here it is not the males venturing into human areas, but rather humans venturing into elephant territories. It means that males are more tolerant to humans, and has nothing to do with the quest for better food as when they venture in crop areas. You need to thread your arguments better. L. 424-425: What you mention is well known, but you said that the other females were not lactating, so how does your argument hold? L. 426: What does “reasonable” mean here? Also, you cannot consider the median or the mean as a standard. You may have a very healthy or very unhealthy population and the mean (or the median) can vary quite a lot. L. 427-429: Yes, this is true, but this would skew evaluation towards lower BCS for adults, compared to juveniles.... and you found the opposite. L. 431-438: All this is very speculative, and not very convincing. If the animals raid cultures during the rain season it might be for different reasons, and if they don't during the dry season maybe is it because they find enough food within the reserve. You have to be very careful: you do not have enough information to really discuss all that without speculating. L. 438-441: Yes, but you have nothing on that: your data is from one season, in one particular year... not much to inform conservation managers. L. 445-446: Take out the conflict part. It is not part of this argument and just distract the reader. L. 448: “obesity level”. Surely you want to say something else! In nature animals are not obese (or very rarely), only in zoos. L. 442-451: All this is well beyond what your data can tell. L. 454: You keep mentioning the question of evenness in the sex ratio, but there is no foundation in your manuscript to justify why an even structure would be better. L. 472-474: About reintroduction. Your study does not confirm that reintroduction is the solution for this population!!! In no way. See my previous comment on this in the introduction. L. 478: Why mention restoration here? You have never mentioned that the habitat was either destroyed or degraded within the reserve. If it is the case, you should have better described your study area. L. 485-486: About reintroduction to reduce inbreeding. You have no data on that, do not speculate, especially when recommending such drastic approach as translocation, which comes with lots of cons. L. 489: Please restrain from mentioning reintroduction. Just managing the population to ensure its viability (if it is possible), would be enough! As I mentioned in the comments to the introduction, reintroduction is rarely a good solution, as the problem is usually with the habitat (quality or quantity) or with the negative interactions with humans. Figure 3: 1) Eliminate “points” (after Presence, Absence, and Village). 2) The border with Myanmar and the limits of the reserve are similar (same width, same colour). 3) It is har to say where the experimental zone is on the map. It would be better to use the light shade to shade the area. [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.
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| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-20-11590R1 Population structure and body condition assessment to inform conservation strategies for a small isolated Asian elephant population in southwest China PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shi, 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. Check suggestions from both reviewers below, but especially follow the comments of reviewer #2 and please solve them. I agree with those suggestions that I am sure they will improve your work. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 14 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, Paulo Corti, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Reviewer #1: In my opinion, this revised manuscript addresses all comments from myself and the other reviewer in a satisfactory way. I have two really small suggestions: line 323 - 'as in' should be 'than in' line 401-402 - You may want to include a short explanation for why larger home ranges and tolerance of disturbance could be linked to higher BCS. Additionally, the sentence starting 'Which means' should instead start 'Tolerance means' Reviewer #2: General comments The authors have thoroughly attended all the comments and corrections I suggested, and I commend them for this. The methods in particular are now very clear. The discussion, however, still suffers from several problems. First, some new sentences are very unclear; usually they are long, and the authors should be more straightforward. Again, it leaves the reader unsatisfied or unconvinced. As suggested in the previous revision, I strongly suggest the authors ask a fluent English speaker knowledgeable in the field to revise the English. Second, some paragraphs, especially in the first sections of the discussion, do not clearly develop an idea, so it is hard to understand their usefulness. Third, paragraphs themselves are not very well articulated, which make reading “bumpy”. The three recommendations, namely providing food sources during the dry season within the reserve (especially for females), dismantling the fence and establishing dispersal corridors between different areas of the park to allow dispersal to better feeding areas, are very interesting and should be the only focus of the last section. Platitudes such as continuing to document the populations using camera traps to save the population should be avoided, as it dilutes the interesting information. Specific comments All specific comments and corrections are included directly in the new version of the manuscript. ********** [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.
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| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-20-11590R2 Population structure and body condition assessment to inform conservation strategies for a small isolated Asian elephant population in southwest China PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shi, 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. Check and follow the suggestions from reviewer #2 contained in a paragraph below and in the attached PDF file. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 05 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, Paulo Corti, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #2: I commend you for the care you took addressing all my previous comments. The revision by a native speaker was obvious (except for a couple of sentences that were probably added or changed posterior to that revision). However, you will note a few further corrections, sometimes just a coma; these corrections are needed as they change the arguments you make. I have no further comments regarding the interpretation of the data, except in the last paragraph, but this is easily fixed by ommitting the causal link you suggest. All my corrections and comments are in the joint pdf file. [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.
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Assessing population structure and body condition to inform conservation strategies for a small isolated Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in southwest China PONE-D-20-11590R3 Dear Dr. Shi, 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, Paulo Corti, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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PONE-D-20-11590R3 Assessing population structure and body condition to inform conservation strategies for a small isolated Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in southwest China Dear Dr. Shi: 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. Paulo Corti Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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