https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4766-4088
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionSeptember 24, 2021 |
|---|
|
PONE-D-21-30842Elevation, disturbance, and forest type drive the occurrence of a specialist arboreal folivorePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Lindenmayer, 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. In particular, both reviewers raised concerns regarding the decision to exclude some of the data from sites with lower detections and found the methods section to lack appropriate detail. Reviewer one provided useful comments regarding possible framing of the manuscript that may help distinguish this study from previous research showing similar patterns. In addition, given that data was collected and described to account for covariates impacting detection it is not clear why the authors did not chose an analyses approach that could correct for differences in detectability. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 23 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: https://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, Angela Marie White, 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. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “This work has been funded by the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Funding was recieved by DBL.” Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: “This work has been funded by the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Assistance with spotlighting surveys was provided by Dylan Lees. Tabitha Boyer and Jess Williams assisted with manuscript preparation.” We note that you have provided funding information within the Acknowledgements Section. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: “This work has been funded by the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Funding was recieved by DBL.” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 5. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 6. 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: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. 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/ 7. 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: Partly 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: No Reviewer #2: 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 ********** 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: Overall: The authors conducted a study of a threatened species facing several threats. Given the Southern Greater Glider’s association with higher elevations, climate change made add to these threats. As such, I think this is an important contribution, but would require some major revisions prior to publication. General comments: I think the manuscript could be greatly improved by more clearly framing the study around some specific objectives. Currently, it reads as if some long-term monitoring data were used to look for correlations. For example, they could more clearly establish early on in the introduction that Southern Greater Gliders are associated with high elevations, sensitive to temperature, and associated with older forests. As such, they are quite vulnerable to a warming global climate. While the methods are mostly sound, some things need further justification, such as how vegetation density was assessed. In addition, more information about the statistical approach is required. Given that they mention that distances to animals were recorded, I would think a distance sampling framework that allows for the estimation of detection probability would be more appropriate. In addition to these broader comments, more specific issues are listed below. Abstract My primary concern in this section is that I found the abstract to be a bit confusing, mostly regarding methods. First, I would suggest revising the first few sentences to clearly state the aim of the study, as opposed to “describe results.” Line 26-28: Consider omitting the list of forest types to simply state the spotlighting surveys were conducted in southeastern Australia. Line 28-30: Consider stating that the data to which the models were fit were comprised of counts of Southern Greater Glider along transects. Additionally, you might more clearly described how the models first estimate the probability of absence, and then if present, abundance is estimated. I realize this is described in more detail in the Methods, but it would be good to have this in the Abstract to give readers a better idea of what the study entailed. Further, some readers might be confused as to why further down within the Abstract you describe both absence and abundance, which are more commonly estimated with different model frameworks (e.g. occupancy models and distance sampling, respectively). Line 39-40: This sentence seems tangential, and maybe does not need to be included in the Abstract. Line 43-44: Was this an objective of the study? Perhaps this would be a more appropriate way to frame the study at the beginning of the Abstract? Line 45-46: In the phrase, “…expect where they transition,” it is unclear to what “they” refers. Perhaps revise to something like, “…suggests that suitable forests at higher elevations will become increasingly important to the conservation of Southern Greater Glider.” Introduction Line 54-56: Are multiple spatial and temporal scales investigated here? If not, I would suggest omitting this sentence and combining the first two paragraphs into one. Line 64-65: This sentence could be improved by revising to avoid passive voice. Line 66-70: This sentence is quite difficult to read as written. Consider splitting into two or using punctuation to distinguish clauses. In addition, the subject of the first clause is “the conservation status,” yet “it” in the second clause appears to refer to the Southern Greater Glider. Avoiding these sorts of vague pronouns will improve clarity. Line 70-75: These sentences could be improved by avoiding passive voice. Line 77-78: This sentence is a bit awkward as written. Consider revising to something like, “Given these numerous threats, a better understanding of the factors that influence the abundance and distribution of Southern Greater Glider will become increasingly important to their conservation.” Line 79-81: This objective seems inconsistent with the Abstract, which lists several other forest types. Also, there is no mention of abundance here, yet abundance is a focus of the Results section (e.g., lines 239-245). Given the central role that the objectives take on in a manuscript, I believe it is critical that these inconsistencies are resolved, both here and throughout the manuscript. Methods Line 128-129: Perhaps a more general topic sentence would be more appropriate for this paragraph. For example, “we considered a suite of factors that we expected to influence occurrence/abundance of Southern Greater Glider.” Also, please be consistent with Southern Greater Glider vs. Greater Glider. Is there ecological justification for incorporating these topographic metrics? If so, consider including that justification here. Line 133-137: Can you provide a citation to support this claim? Line 138-139: Consider a more concise language, e.g., “…the number of days when minimum temperature was above 20.” What was the spatial resolution in these climate data? Given the small study area, is there reason to believe that these metric would vary for any reason other than elevation? Given the high degree of correlation mentioned in the results, and no other mention of these variable in the results, I would suggest omitting this from the study, as it provides little information. Line 151-153: Consider combining this with the discussion of tree age on lines 104-110. Line 154-156: A paragraph is typically comprised of at least 3 sentences. Could this be merged with an existing paragraph? Perhaps the paragraph describing the environmental covariates of slope, aspect, and elevation? Line 158-160: A paragraph is typically comprised of at least 3 sentences. Could this be moved to the section describing the spotlight surveys? Furthermore, please provide some description of how these categories were defined, and how consistent categorization between observers was ensured. Line 162-166: Given the potential confusion between “mountain ash” and “Mountain Ash” I would suggest stating at the very beginning of the methods that the sample size is 123. You can then mention that this was part of a broader long-term sampling project, but including that information as written and the omission of the 22 sites due to access all just leads to unnecessary information that only serves to detract from the overall clarity of the manuscript. Line 166-167: It is unclear why yi is defined when it is not referenced anywhere else in the manuscript. Line 168-173: Please provide a sentence or two to justify why this modelling framework was selected, rather than more widely-used modelling frameworks, such as occupancy or distance sampling. Line 191-205: Some justification why this less widely-used model comparison criterion was used is needed. In addition, some description of how the LOOIC is used to compare models (e.g., lower = better fit? More parsimonious? Both? Line 206-207: Please revise to clarify that the models were fit to the data analyzed in a Bayesian setting. Line 208: Please provide a citation for these priors. Line 209: Chains are typically much longer. Did you inspect trace plots for convergence? Were any other model diagnostics assessed? Results Line 215-217: This paragraph, as well as Table 1, does not appear to be relevant to the manuscript and should be omitted. Line 218-221: This information should be moved to the Methods. Line 226-228: This sentence should be moved to the Methods section. Line 242-245: It is unclear why the top-ranked model of abundance includes only elevation, yet the relationships between abundance and each of the number of hollow-bearing trees and forest age are also discussed. The “combined” model should be discussed more clearly in the Methods section. Further, there appears to be a great deal of uncertainty around the effects of the number of hollow bearing trees and forest age. As I commented elsewhere, it may be more appropriate to condense these variable into fewer categories. Discussion Line 272-273: The claim that they are more likely to be observed on sites with large numbers of hollow bearing trees in problematic. First, the distribution of the data is poor, such that there is a great deal of uncertainty around this relationship, particularly at sites where there were more hollow-bearing trees. Second, what is meant by “large number?” 5? 10? Third, I would avoid interchanging observed/occurred. Since you did not estimate the probability an animal was observed, given present, I would avoid that term. Line 277-294: Based on the text of this paragraph, I would encourage the authors to investigate an interaction between forest age and the number of hollow-bearing trees. Line 315-319: It seems like the authors would be able to investigate this relationship with their data (i.e. do Moutnain Ash forests have more hollow-bearing trees than Alpine Ash?). I would encourage them to think more carefully about why Greater Gliders to no occur in Alpine Ash forests, despite being suitable elevation. Line 344-347: This sentence is awkward and should be revised. Line 349: It is unclear to what “they” refers. Please avoid use of these vague pronouns. Figures Figure 1. I would remove the sites dominated by other tree species as they do not appear to be relevant to this study that focused on the Mountain Ash sites only. Additionally, it may be helpful to readers outside Australia to have an inset map showing the geographical context. Finally, there is nothing in the legend or caption about what the border represents. (presumably some conservation area?) Figure 2. From this graphic and the table in the supplement, it seems that the data for the Nu. Of hollow bearing trees is not well distributed. Perhaps converting this to a binary variable would be more appropriate? (e.g. hollow bearing trees present or not). Also, two of the panels lack labels (e.g. Figure 2d and Figure 2e) Reviewer #2: Review of PONE-D-21-30842 Elevation, disturbance, and forest type drive the occurrence of a specialist arboreal folivore I enjoyed this manuscript, which investigated habitat use in a species of conservation concern. As such, the question addressed is important, and the findings of importance. The manuscript is well-written and the methods appear sound. I really liked the explicit management implications section. I had the following minor comments that may help clarify some aspects of the manuscript. 1. I was a little confused about the survey procedure. The surveys were conducted at least one hour after sunset (9pm-12am), but during some of the months (Dec/Jan), it would not have been dark by 9pm, or possibly just getting dark. Were the surveys started later by season? Do the surveys last from 9-12 or were just conducted sometime between 9 and 12? Does glider activity change throughout that 3 hour period? In at least some nocturnal species, activity varies throughout the night. I’m looking here for clarity of what was conducted, and some reassurance that time of night would not have effected glider detectability. 2. All surveys were conducted along the road. Is there any evidence of either attraction to or avoidance of roads? Is habitat use along the road likely to be similar to areas away from roads? 3. Methods/Results – I was confused why only 123 of the 161 sites were included, and particularly why this information was introduced in the results. I think this should in the methods when you talked about the 161 sites, since this is not really a result. The results presented here (Table 1) could also be used to justify the inclusion of mountain ash sites only if presented in the methods. Alternatively, I would consider including an analysis in all habitat types since these may confirm your described patterns, or suggest other factors in other habitat types. At the moment, 5 sites with 9 animals (~10% of both sites and animals) have been excluded from the analysis – but may have valuable information for future conservation. The latter approach is my preference – include more information on the non-mountain ash sites – since your main aim is to describe factors associated with occurrence in ash forests. 4. Discussion – first paragraph – I would have liked some consideration of why the species might be rare in Alpine Ash and absent in Shining Gum. The may be absent/rare because this is less preferred habitat, or instead due to other contributing factors that could shed light on threatening processes. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Paul Taillie 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 1 |
|
PONE-D-21-30842R1Elevation, disturbance, and forest type drive the occurrence of a specialist arboreal folivorePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Lindenmayer, 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 by Apr 09 2022 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 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: https://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, Angela Marie White, Ph.D. 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 #2: All comments have been addressed 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 #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: No ********** 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: The authors have addressed all my concerns - I really appreciated the detailed response to reviewers, and the amendments have improved the manuscript Reviewer #3: General comments This is an interesting and worthwhile study. The authors have done a good job of revising the ms based on the reviews of previous referees. I think some further revision will enhance the quality and readability of this ms. Some new paragraphs seem redundant given other text that is presented. Elsewhere I found there is existing or new text that is not concise and should be deleted. In a few places I think some additional references could be cited to link with earlier research conducted on this species. These suggestions are documented below. Detailed comments and corrections The line numbers refer to the clean copy. Abstract L32-33. This sentence can be deleted ‘We excluded data collected in these forest types in further analysis.’ Introduction L69. Add Kavanagh & Lambert (1990) Aust Wildl Res 17:285. L70. Add Kavanagh & Wheeler (2004). p.413-25. In ‘The Biology of Australian Possums and Gliders’. Add Lindenmayer, et al. (2004). Wildlife Research 31, 569. Methods L116. Glider surveys were conducted during Dec 2020 to May 2021. Why are temperature data described for 2019-20 and yet the temperature data used in an analysis was from 2015-19? L139. Table S1 describes 3 not 2 temperature variables. Is it meaningful to go to 2 decimal places with all of the variables? In Table S2 as well. Change ‘No’ to ‘No.’ L141 & 144. It would be helpful to know explicitly the period over which the number of days were estimated to avoid confusion (i.e. is it 1 Jan 2015 to 31 Dec 2019? i.e. 5 years not 4). L148. ‘that remain’ needs some qualification. L171. It would be helpful to the reader if you stated the benefits of modelling species’ absence rather than presence. L199. It’s not clear whether there is justification to build models with 4 covariates. L201-3. Awkward sentence structure. Perhaps put variables in brackets or simplify to be referred to as temperature variables. L206-8. Do the levels in the variables need to be restated here? L209-10. Given the high correlation between elevation and the 2 temperature variables it is not clear why all 3 should be retained. Two appear redundant. One temp variable certainly is. L223-229. Delete. This seems to be covered more concisely at L201-3. Note at L223 ‘presence’ rather than ‘absence’ is used. There was a high correlation between the 2 temperature variables so only one should be used. L229-236. Delete. This section seems redundant given it precedes the results section in which one could concisely state what is presented, and leave any discussion of the models to the discussion. Results L240-46. This could be written more concisely. Some text seems repetitious of what is stated elsewhere (e.g. confining analysis to only the mountain ash forest). Describe the greater glider findings first. L251. Delete ‘As outlined above,’ Table S3. It would help if the models were arranged from lowest to highest ∆LOOIC for one column. L260-1. Fig 2b should be Fig 2c in the text. Unconditional abundance is shown in 2d-f which could be cited with each of a, b, c. L272-281. Fig. 2 caption. There is redundancy in this caption. Delete ‘The first row of the figure shows’. This is not concise. It also seems to be at odds with the layout of the Fig panels which are labelled a-f. Discussion I think the discussion could be more concise. I think the first section of the discussion could be subdivided further to focus the reader’s attention. Perhaps rather than the formal subheading used currently, name the key variable identified – e.g. Influence of … Then a subsequent subheading (around L334) could be the Influence of forest type. L290-3. This sentence is redundant. L298. Add Kavanagh & Wheeler (2004); Lindenmayer et al. (2004). L313-15. It needs to be made clear in the study area description that the younger stand ages may contain some old growth elements. Perhaps because stand replacing fires may be patchy. L317. There seems some repetition here. L319-22. The point here about detection and forest age could be made more concise. I assume this point may be less relevant when you model prob of absence. L326. I think it worth also citing reference 18 which first identified an influence of elevation on- greater glider occupancy or decline. L331. Or the climate model predicted temperature less well than elevation. L334. High not higher. L337. I think Kavanagh & Stanton (1998) (Aust Zool 30:449) should be cited here in relation to paucity in alpine ash and at the highest elevations. L338. This sentence could be deleted. L347-9. This sentence should be placed at the end of the section. The following reference should also be cited. Salmona, J., Dixon, K.M., and Banks, S. C. (2018). The effects of fire history on hollow-bearing tree abundance in montane and subalpine eucalypt forests in southeastern Australia. Forest Ecology and Management 428, 93–103. Ross Goldingay ********** 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: 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 |
|
Elevation, disturbance, and forest type drive the occurrence of a specialist arboreal folivore PONE-D-21-30842R2 Dear Dr. Lindenmayer, 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, Angela Marie White, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
|
PONE-D-21-30842R2 Elevation, disturbance, and forest type drive the occurrence of a specialist arboreal folivore Dear Dr. Lindenmayer: 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. Angela Marie White Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Open letter on the publication of peer review reports
PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.
We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.
Learn more at ASAPbio .