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PONE-D-20-21124

The Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program from 1997 to 2017: Results, Analyses, and Lessons Learned.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Carter,

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 submit your revised manuscript within 30 days. 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.

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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Yong Zhang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

I have received two reviewers comments. Both of them think it is a nice manuscript with only a few comments. I found those comments are not difficult to be addressed and hence suggest a Minor Revision.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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

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

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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: This study reviewed and analyzed frog call data from LAMP and evaluated the species richness, diversity and distributions, population dynamics of the three survey regions in Louisiana. The authors found the frog community of North region is in the middle between the South and Florida parishes. The authors also concluded monitoring for more than 10 years is vital to assess population and occupancy trends.

For amphibians, 10 years are usually enough to evaluate the population dynamics. Therefore, my major concern is the survey method to count the abundance in this study. Has been it test the correlation between call indexes and species abundance? The frog call activities can largely fluctuate when ambient temperature or breeding stages (especially important for explosive breeding species) vary. Were these variables added to the statistic models? In addition, did these surveys complete at daytime or at night or both? I strongly suggest the authors discuss the limitation of the methods when draw a conclusion about the time scale for amphibian population monitoring.

Reviewer #2: Overall, most everything was fine with few errors that I caught:

line 130: "of" prior to "west" can be deleted.

line 139: There's a strange placement of "nor" at the end of a sentence. "...did not need permits nor." Reword.

line 144: Just remove the miles and stick with km. No scientific article should be using miles.

line 157: I think your "(1)" is supposed to be an "(A)"

line 263: "Were" not "Where"

line 449: Remove "it" in "...of runs completed make it direct..."

line 494: "where" not "were"

line 519: sci name not in italics

line 520: sci name not in italics

Perhaps it is just me, but I had to read lines 155-156 a few times. Initially, I thought if condition B is satisfied, then A is automatically satisfied, in which case listing A is null. Eventually I got it. If other reviewers perhaps had a similar issue, needing to read this sentence a few times, then I'd suggest maybe providing an example. Or perhaps suggesting B first, and then A. "...routes had to have: (A) Surveys need to span 20 or more years, and (B) within that time span, there need to be data sets from 8 or more different years." I think it was the small (8) to large (20) that kind of threw me. So, I would suggest rewording to make the sentence/ conditions a little more clear, if other reviewers noted this area as being a bit awkward. If I'm the only one, then disregard.

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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: Yes: Kevin R Messenger

[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.]

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PONE-D-20-21124R1

The Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program from 1997 to 2017: Results, Analyses, and Lessons Learned.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Carter,

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.

Although I'm keeping the editorial decision as Minor Revision (the data and analyses are largely solid), the Introduction and Discussion, nonetheless, need some solid reworking.  As reviewer 3 noted, neither of these sections are well-developed.  I fully agree.  PLoS ONE is an international journal and the Introduction needs to place the study into some broader context rather than simply describing a program specific to a single state in the United States.  For example, what was the motivation for the study?  In what way will the results be relevant?  Why would someone care to read your publication?  Also, although publications commonly include goals/objectives/predictions towards the end of the Introduction, these are woven within the final 1 or 2 paragraphs of that section.  I don't know that I have ever seen a publication where these have been simply numerically listed.  Ditto the Discussion.  As it currently stands, most of this section is just restating results. The Discussion section needs to be a developed discussion of those results.  The citations below are recent PLoS One publications in the same general topic area and are provided as representative examples of what a typical publication might look like.  

Hutto Jr, D., & Barrett, K. (2021). Do urban open spaces provide refugia for frogs in urban environments?. PloS one, 16(1), e0244932. 

Rivas, G. A., et al. (2021). Biogeographical patterns of amphibians and reptiles in the northernmost coastal montane complex of South America. PloS one, 16(3), e0246829.

Ceron, K., Santana, D. J., & Valente-Neto, F. (2020). Seasonal patterns of ecological uniqueness of anuran metacommunities along different ecoregions in Western Brazil. PloS one, 15(9), e0239874.

All reviewers have had favorable comments about the overall quality of your data and statistical approaches used.  I look forward to receiving a revised version, where the Introduction and Discussion and have been better fleshed out.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 19 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:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Janice L. Bossart

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: As I did not have many issues with the first draft, and other reviewers had more - this version is more than acceptable to me.

Reviewer #3: My overall impression is that I am impressed with this massive project and the data. Very important that they are presented. The analysis are appropriate and are communicated clearly.

I would wish for more of a proper discussion section. Except for ll. 542-550, the current version just reads as a rehash of the Results. Even though I personally don’t find call surveys my cup of tea, this is such a large effort and such a large data set, that any mechanical problems that would usually be inherent in a report like this one are simply overrun by the enormity of the data. So, I’m a hater, but I love the data and effort reported in this manuscript and hope to read it in print soon.

(This is my first view of this manuscript; many of the parts read like they are responses to previous reviewers and so feel a little clunky. I've mentioned these points below).

Other comments intended to help improve the writing:

Can the volunteers willing to be named be included? This huge project is a great opportunity to recognize them.

31 species? There are 32 reported species in Louisiana.

l. 55 - ‘synchronicity’ is unclear

Make the abstract a single paragraph.

l. 64 - remove ‘perceived’ and ‘North American’

Is this really an Introduction? It reads as a description of the project. It is not placed in the context of the global question of amphibian decline and the monitoring programs put in place to address this problem.

ll. 69-72 and 77-79 are better placed in Methods

l. 80. move [1] before period.

ll. 92-93 - this is not a novel question; species co-occurences and associated phenology and habitat are already known and described in the literature. And this study is not the best way to address this.

ll. 98-99 - see previous.

ll. 113-116 and l. 119 - The Florida Parishes make sense because it’s a biogeographic thing. But do better at explaining the choice of 31 degrees. I think it’s a simply reason, but write it. At this point, it reads as something arbitrary but I doubt that it was chosen arbitrarily.

TABLE 1 - I understand why there might be a wide range of variation in number of stops. But try to describe why.

l. 161 (and elsewhere) - use your term ‘observers’ not ‘surveyors’

l.177 - data ‘are’; replace ‘is’

l. 181 - see previous

l.209-221 - remove the descriptions of species indices calculations; these are common knowledge

The GAM is description is critical to this manuscript and it’s clear. Nice job!

ll. 244-248 and Fig. 2. - this section feels like something that may have been requested by an earlier reviewer. I find it unnecessary; it’s intuitive and use of the GAM analyses are fairly common. A bit like explaining how a regression works.

l. 261-262 - I’m interested! Why were there fewer routes?

l. 268 - I LOVE the numbers 54 and (especially) 12,792! This line represents how much work has been put into this project and why I think some place for the volunteers names would improve this manuscript.

l.272 - 11 species calling at a single stop! That is neat and impressive and shows how good the observers were.

l. 278-284 - I don’t understand the reason to include this.

Fig. 5 - This could be deleted and the regression statistics simply incorporated into the text.

ll. 306-314 and elsewhere - Taxonomy matters in some journals and I’ll assume that it does in PLOS ONE. It is not “spring peepers”; it is Spring Peepers; it is not “Southern (Acris gryllus) and northern cricket frogs (Acris crepitans)”; it is Southern Cricket Frogs (Acris gryllus) and Northern Cricket Frogs (Acris crepitans).

In addition, at present, the preferred use is Hyla not Dryophytes (along with the associated gender changes in species epithets. See Crother et al for current taxonomy

ll. 319-322 - I think this is an excellent place for proper digging. Why not compare to older patterns? For example, compare with Fig. 6 in Dundee and Rossman. This would allow one to address the question of changing call phenology associated with a 35 year change in climate.

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

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

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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Christopher K. Beachy

[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.

PONE-D-20-21124R2

The Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program from 1997 to 2017: Results, Analyses, and Lessons Learned.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Carter,

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.

Before your manuscript can be accepted, a few small changes are needed and numerous errors need to be corrected.  These are listed below.  Line numbers refer to the clean copy.

• Move Fig. 2 to Supplemental Material.  Re-number all Figs to reflect this change and modify text in all places where former Fig. 2 is referenced.
• Table 1 & 9 have small alignment issues.  Table 1: Spacing of the title 'Route Name' on the right side needs moved left to correspond with the placement of that same title on the left side.  Table 9: footnote... align on left with no indent.  Check that all information in all Tables is formatted consistently.
• Formatting of references is inconsistent, e.g. authors followed by periods or commas, initials set off by commas or not. Carefully check that all are in agreement and in the format used by PLoS One.
• Lines 81-83. #3 Wording is awkward. Reword. I suggest: If there are trends, are these associated  with frog communities as a whole or with individual species or with both.
• Line 89. Missing 'they'
• Line 111.  'The state was...' 
• Line 117. 'where' not 'were'
• Line 122.  'were' not 'was'...data were
• Line 134. 'between at' makes no sense. Delete 'between'
• Lines 139-140. Multiple grammar issues. Replace with: ArcInfo was used to superimpose on the public domain base map the locations of NAAMP route survey routes and then to generate a TIFF file of the new map. 
• Line 146. Delete 'stops'
• Line 152. 'require' not 'required'
• Lines 178 & 180. Replace 'it is' with 'data are' 
• Line 336. Comma after 'North'
• Line 340. Add 'indicated... are indicated by
• Line 349. Delete 'a'
• Line 403. Replace 'between the' with 'across'
• Line 413. 'more' not 'move'
• Line 415. Delete 'the'.. Change Fig 2 reference to reflect move to supplemental 
• Line 430. 'which' should be preceded by a comma
• Line 434. 'combinations' not 'combination'
• Line 437. Replace 'had' with 'showed'
• Lines 479-480. The correct phrase is 'in and of themselves' 
• Line 564. 'which' should be preceded by a comma
• Line 584. Delete extra space before Sauer
• Lines 329, 331, 516, 532, 561 & 564. Spell out genus at start of a sentence.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 30 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.

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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dr. Janice L. Bossart

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[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 #3: 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 #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

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

Reviewer #3: 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 #3: The authors have responded to all the suggestions that I provided in my first review. Where they have not adopted my suggestions, they have adequately described why. I'm good with what they have adopted and what they have not.

**********

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 #3: Yes: Christopher K. Beachy

[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.

PONE-D-20-21124R3

The Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program from 1997 to 2017: Results, Analyses, and Lessons Learned.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Carter,

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

I'm sorry I need to send the manuscript back to you again, but PLoS One manuscripts are not copy edited.  Once I accept it will go to the production staff.  Just a few things:

• Line 118 (Clean copy), i.e. Table 1 footnote.  Although you indicated 'was' had been changed to 'were', it hasn't.  Please change, '...data from that route were...'
• Table 1.  Please ensure the entire Table can be see in Draft view in Word since it extends past the right margin.  I can't doublecheck as I only receive a pdf.
• Scientific nomenclature.  I appreciate your effort, but genus is generally only spelled out on first use in the main text and at the start of a sentence and abbreviated otherwise.  Sorry, I should have caught this issue earlier, but it only hit me when even more were spelled out in this version.  In the main text, spell out genus once and thereafter abbreviate.  For example, spell out Lithobates on line 276, but otherwise only use the abbreviation for any Lithobates species unless it starts a sentence.  Ditto for all other genera.  In many spots where genus is currently spelled out fully, you'll need to abbreviate.  Don't change how you currently have nomenclature in the abstract, any of the tables, or the figure 8 caption.    
• Line 479-480 (Clean copy).  Delete 'the' before each species (re-abbreviate genus as necessary).  

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 12 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dr. Janice L. Bossart

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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The Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program from 1997 to 2017: Results, Analyses, and Lessons Learned.

PONE-D-20-21124R4

Dear Dr. Carter,

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.  Note below under Additional Editor Comments that there are still some minor editorial changes that are required concerning genus and species names.

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,

Dr.  Janice L. Bossart

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

It seems my directions on how genus and species names should be handled were unclear. Therefore I have copy & pasted example exact text here. To reiterate from my previous decision letter: "For example, spell out Lithobates on line 276, but otherwise only use the abbreviation for any Lithobates species unless it starts a sentence. Ditto for all other genera."

Hence, lines 294-298 should be: Species could be grouped by when they were heard calling as either winter callers, spring callers, or summer callers (Table 4). Cajun Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris fouquettei), Spring Peepers (P. crucifer), L. sphenocephalus, Crawfish Frogs (L. areolatus) and Pickerel Frogs (L. palustris) were winter (e.g., Run 1) callers.

Lines 294-298 should NOT be: Species could be grouped by when they were heard calling as either winter callers, spring callers, or summer callers (Table 4). Cajun Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris fouquettei), Spring Peepers (Pseudacris crucifer), L. sphenocephalus, Crawfish Frogs (Lithobates areolatus) and Pickerel Frogs (Lithobates palustris) were winter (e.g., Run 1) callers.

Please carefully go through the manuscript text and make sure that the genus name is only spelled out the first time it is used and if it begins a sentence. Otherwise, abbreviate the genus name even if it's associated with a different species in the same genus as I've illustrated for lines 294-298 with respect to what the text should vs. should not look like.  Notice genus is abbreviated for all Lithobates species listed because it was previously spelled out in earlier text, and is abbreviated for P. crucifer because its first use was associated with Psudacris fouquettei.  As a reminder, do not change how names are handled in the Abstract, Tables, or Figure caption.

Reviewers' comments: