Peer Review History
Original SubmissionJuly 20, 2023 |
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PONE-D-23-22870Tackling the lack of behavioural evidence for the domestication syndrome – Feasibility and reliability of a novel Domestication Syndrome test battery with free-ranging dogsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Capitain, 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 Oct 27 2023 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:
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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. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Authors Your manuscript has been assessed and serious flaws in the study design, DS concept and grammatical errors have been highlighted. Kindly and thoroughly address the issued raised by the reviews and resubmit for another assessment. Thank you [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: No ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 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: 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: GENERAL COMMENTS: Let me start with saying that I am very happy to see a behaviour study on free-ranging dogs. However, I cannot recommend this study for publication in its current form for several reasons, the main one being that this is not a study of the domestication syndrome and I find its current presentation and narrative to be quite misleading in all honesty. It is very unclear to me why the authors have chosen to present their manuscript so elaborate around the domestication syndrome when they a) do not confirm the presence of the domestication syndrome in the dog population (there is no test of whether the alleged domestication syndrome behaviours are in fact correlated – a central assumption of the hypothesis), and b) find that their so-called test battery fails to adequately quantify the behaviours they claim to be associated with the domestication syndrome. The eagerness to label their test battery the “Domestication Syndrome test battery” and claim that it is useful going forward in testing domestication syndrome behaviours, in spite of the very results they bring forward, therefore seem very misplaced and quite frankly puzzling. This is especially emphasized by the fact that half of this test battery includes behaviours that cannot in a meaningful way be associated with the domestication syndrome – a point the authors themselves hint at by mentioning that they will also test other domestication hypotheses with this test battery. These other behaviours, as compared to the claimed domestication syndrome behaviours, are even the only behaviours that with some confidence seem to be feasible and reliable to test in a free-ranging population. Why then label it the “Domestication Syndrome test battery”? It is simply misleading. That being said, and while I understand that the above is a strong critique of the study, I think there is value in the study from the perspective that it is, in my opinion, actually a methods paper and it would benefit immensely from being rewritten as such. The work the authors have done in examining the feasibility and reliability in conducting in-situ behavioural testing of free-ranging dogs does have merit. So, instead of overselling this study by pinning it on a narrative that it simply cannot sustain, my strong recommendation for this manuscript is therefore that it undergoes major revision in order to be restructured to bring forward the valuable contributions it actually has in terms of the insights on general (not domestication syndrome) behavioural testing of free-ranging dogs. Highlighting the challenges of taking behavioural testing outside controlled laboratory settings and emphasize how this is a necessary next step in moving the field forward is valuable enough on its own. DETAILED COMMENTS: Line 29: The authors need to remove the physiological reference here. Even though hair samples were collected, they were not analyzed and we have no way of knowing if a) this method is reliable in obtaining physiological parameters, and b) if these correlate with the behavioural traits in the domestication syndrome. This reference is there for misleading in this context. Line 53: Some clarity is needed here. Selection on tameness is not the mechanism per se. Tameness is likely the behavioural trait that was selected for during initial animal domestication cascading the phenotypic changes as seen in the domestication syndrome. However, the underlying mechanism causing the presumed correlated traits of the domestication syndrome remains unknown, but has been proposed to be neural crest deficit (Wilkins et al. 2016) or attenuated ontogenesis (Balyaev 1979). Line 58: What are all the morphological domestication syndrome-associated traits? Details are generally very sparse and the background is too superficial. Line 59: What physiological traits? Which traits are part of the DS and which do not fit with the hypothesis in dogs? Line 60-61: Which behavioural traits? Which traits are part of the DS and which do not fit with the hypothesis in dogs? Line 61- 66: This part has me a bit confused. It seems more like an afterthought and I am not quite sure how it fits in with the narrative. Are the authors saying that the domestication syndrome is not true in dogs or that it is expanded just in dogs with these extra features? Line 64: I am quite surprised to see the uncritical and sole use of this outdated reference (Hare and Tomasello 2005), given the long-standing debate (of +20 years) on the topic and the not so few studies refuting the uniqueness in dogs being able to follow human communicative clues. Udell et al. (2008) demonstrated that wolves outperformed dogs in a pointing test when tested under identical conditions. Likewise, Wheat et al. (2022) reanalyzed previously published data claiming that dog puppies have early emerging skills in following human pointing whereas wolves do not, but upon adequately controlling for the puppies’ different environmental exposure dogs and wolves performed equally well. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that close to 30 species (both wild and domesticated, e.g. elephants, bats, goats, pigs and not the least wolves) across eight taxonomic groups have the ability to follow pointing gestures (see Krause et al. 2018 for review). Line 73-82: While I agree that it is problematic that some studies do not address the behavioural traits of the domestication syndrome in concert, I am puzzled by the argument that standardized test batteries designed to quantify behaviours, of which some are the basic behaviours of the domestication syndrome, should somehow be unfit for hypothesis testing. The argumentation brought forward by the authors here becomes quite ironic as they a) do not test all the behavioural traits of the domestication syndrome, and b) do not test the covariance between the behaviours they do test. There is thus no actual confirmation of the domestication syndrome in their free-ranging dog population, given one would accept the premise that the behaviours chosen are in fact domestication syndrome behaviours. Line 83-94: I generally agree with this paragraph. However, it is too much of a blanket statement that free-ranging dogs in general is not admixed with breed dogs. For instance, Boyko et al. has a paper from 2009 showing that more than 60% of African village dogs could be classified as non-native, i.e. with a potential admixture with modern breeds. This does not mean that free-ranging dogs are not better models for these questions than modern breeds, but introgression with modern breeds must be assumed in free-breeding populations like this. Line 100: I am starting to get a bit confused. Are the authors testing personality, the domestication syndrome or alterative domestication hypotheses? Line 103-122: My confusion grows. Now it sounds more like a methods paper… Line 124-126: If the battery test all these different hypotheses (which I do not believe it does, for instance there is no test of correlation between alleged domestication syndrome traits and the majority of domestication syndrome behaviours could not be adequately quantified) how come the authors label it the “Domestication Syndrome test battery”? Line 145-146: This could create a sampling bias where only the tamest dogs participate, i.e. the most fearful dogs would not. This can ultimately affect results with exaggerated sociability scores and more fearful or less explorative dogs being underrepresented in the sample. Line 160: Which domestication syndrome traits? Line 193-203: This seems like a good test of human-directed sociability. Line 225-253: Subtests 4-6, sure the authors wish to test other domestication hypotheses (though see my comments on pointing above), but since these tests take up half of the test battery and also seem to have the best feasibility and reliability, why then the eagerness to label the test battery the “Domestication Syndrome test battery”. It seems to me, that this test battery unlikely to actually quantify domestication syndrome behaviours, if at all. Line 204-214: If the purpose is to quantify conspecific sociability and aggression, I am not sure I understand why the authors did not simply observe behaviours toward other dogs in the area? I am not convinced this test can be disentangled from neophobia and/or boldness. Line 365-366: So, no aggression behaviour? Maybe one fear/stress/redirected behaviour (Yawning)? Line 387: But I thought that tail between legs had poor interrater reliability and should be excluded (given that the authors adhere to the 0.07 treshold as stated in several places, e.g. line 345, 347 and 356). Line 388: Could this low test-retest reliability be caused by habituation in spite modification of the fake dog. Maybe the testing set-up alone could be cause for habituation? Perhaps testing conspecific sociability and aggression is better in real life social contexts? Line 401: Again, I am puzzled by the continued use of tail between legs even though it does not meet the authors stated 0.07 ICC threshold. I find it to be borderline misleading. Line 404-405: This to me indicates both habituation, as mentioned above, but also that the fake dog was indeed treated as a novel object and not a suitable model of a conspecific. Table 3: I find it very misleading, and confusing, to include variables that did not pass the ICC thresholds. Line 467-475: I disagree with the interpretation of the results on sociability and the conclusions brought forward here. The sample presented here is very likely to be a result of the most social dogs in the population. This is because the dogs’ participation was entirely voluntarily and the dogs themselves could decide to leave the test at any given time. Since the study only includes test-retested dogs, this will inherently bias the sampling towards more social individuals and exclude fearful dogs. Line 526-532: If the authors wish to speculate about phenotypic plasticity, I encourage them to do so in a more detailed way. What would the adaptive value of this be in free-ranging dogs? Reviewer #2: There is too little known about the variation in behavior in stray/street dogs, and this study provides a survey of the types of behavioral tests that can and cannot be performed in this difficult testing environment. The study concept is thus very interesting and worthwhile. I enjoyed reading the description of traits tested and the results and discussion. As a preliminary study, I think it would be great to see the battery of tests published so that it could be retested with a larger sample. However, I think the title, hypotheses, and design of the paper show a fundamental misunderstanding of some of the basic concepts in domestication studies. Domestication and the Domestication Syndrome (DS) hypothesis are not equivalent concepts, and the two are confounded repeatedly throughout the paper. The DS is a well-known and highly debated hypothesis that has been tested in many ways, taken apart, and found to be highly problematic. Most domestication workers agree that is has a very specific applicability when being tested. I provided more details on relevant sources in my "Itemized Review".There is no discussion of these issues in the present manuscript. The DS aims to explain the generalized traits co-ocurring in domestic populations when compared to wild counterparts. Dogs have repeatedly been criticized as a bad model for testing "early domestication" or the DS, due to their artificial breeding. In my opinion your study does not test the DS. It tests the presence of certain human-dog interactions that reflect tameness or lack of aggression in stray dogs. It is successful in that, and would be a great survey to publish as a starting point for behavioral studies in street dogs. However, as stated in my Itemized Review, the DS is not tested here. Tameness is but one trait, and it is present in all domesticated populations that have been studied thus far. I believe the authors could redesign and re-work this study with a better understanding of what they are testing. My best wishes to you and this work. I think it would be great to see this published once it is improved. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ********** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. 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Revision 1 |
PONE-D-23-22870R1Street-wise dog testing: feasibility and reliability of a behavioural test battery for free-ranging dogs in their natural habitat Dear Dr. Capitain, 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. There are some issues you need to address to improve the manuscript. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.Thank you Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 08 2024 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, Joshua Kamani, PhD 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 #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review the revised version of this manuscript. I really appreciate the great effort the authors have put into changing the narrative to a methods paper. While I think the manuscript is much improved, I, however, still have some comments that I feel could still substantially improve the submission. My main issue with the manuscript in its current form is that the great clarity and conciseness of the abstract is somewhat lost in the main text, where especially the introduction, and to some extend the discussion, get overly wordy and complicated. This is a shame, as the message in the abstract is so to the point and all the extra fill added in the manuscript text takes away from this, leaving the reader with a quite confused impression in which the developed methods end up coming across much vaguer than they actually are. I therefore mainly have general comments regarding this issue and suggestions on how to deal with them: INTRODUCTION The narrative about changes during domestication still seems to be forced into the manuscript and it is distracting from what it is really about: a methods paper testing whether it is feasible to use a behavioral test battery on free-ranging dogs (like it is used on pet dogs). For instance, in the very first line in the introduction (line 45-47) it is mentioned which behavioral traits are expected to change during dog domestication but this is irrelevant to the narrative of the sentence and the rest of the paragraph. Why not just focus on the history of dog domestication and the interest of dogs in science? This line of argumentation leads me to the paragraph spanning line 76-92. I have already stated in my previous review that I largely agree that pet/breed dogs are not the best lineages of dogs for questions relating to domestication. This point has been emphasized by several large-scale genetic and behavioral studies. However, I do have to object to the statement that free-ranging dogs per se are better candidates for studying dog domestication. I suspect that the authors might be conflating the generic term free-ranging dogs with village dogs, which are independent canid lineages that predates breed dog formation. While true that the majority of the worlds’ dog population is indeed free-ranging, all free-ranging dogs are not village dogs. A significant proportion of free-ranging dogs are abandoned pet dogs and should not automatically be labeled as an independent genetic lineage without some sort of genetic evidence hereof. I also feel that the Boyko references is particularly misguided in its use in line 86 as they show that while authentic village dog lineages do exist in Africa, many dogs are heavily admixed with breed dog lineages. This is not to say that I disagree with the argumentation that 1) free-ranging dog populations are worth studying (they are and we should), and 2) that some of them are better representatives than breed dogs. I just think that especially point 2) should be approached with caution and maybe in this context, where the authors do not in fact have any evidence for the genetic makeup of their free-ranging dog population, should err on the side of the narrative of point 1) and simply argue that because the vast majority of the worlds dog population is free-ranging AND thus free of strong artificial selection, we should simply make the effort to develop validated methods to quantify the behaviors of these dogs. That alone is a strong and clear argument – just like in the abstract. The other narrative (i.e. point 2)) is not important to the methods presented and just adds clutter and confusion. Line 93-120 is what it is all about – rigor and repeatability, love to see it! Specific comments: Line 112: Interchanging use of free-ranging dogs and street dogs throughout the manuscript, which is a bit confusing. Line 114: Which domestication hypotheses. Why is this relevant to this methods paper? Line 186: Seems like the authors are testing multiple behaviors at the same time here. Playfulness could be independent of sociability, no? Will sociability and play be separated in the analyses? Ah, I can see that playfulness was dropped from the analyses… Line 187: My objections to using the fake dog as a test of conspecific aggression from the first review remain unchanged given the results presented (even though the issues with the test possibly quantifying neophobia and boldness instead of conspecific aggression is now lightly touched upon in line 530-532). Line 211: Please also see Nawroth, C., Wiesmann, K., Schlup, P. et al. Domestication and breeding objective did not shape the interpretation of physical and social cues in goats (Capra hircus). Sci Rep 13, 19098 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46373-9 for the latest on the pointing debate. Line 479-483: Not necessarily. These dogs could also have learned that humans mean food, which seems highly likely given that they are all scavengers. So, the behaviors the authors here associate with consistency and heritability could simply be the result of a learned behavioral process. How can the authors disentangle these concepts when they do not know the background (genetic, social etc.) of the dogs they are testing? This part is very speculative at best. Line 502-511: This is a thoughtful paragraph. I wonder if point 3) does not leave room for habituation to the test situation, which might affect behavioral measurements? Line 565-566: The authors have not introduced the domestication syndrome until this point. The reader does not know that this syndrome, or neoteny, is and it is not relevant to the narrative. Strongly suggest deleting this part. Line 571-575: This part is only relevant if the authors know for sure that their dog population predates breed formation and they currently do not have the genetic evidence to back this statement up. In this light I find this line of argumentation irrelevant and speculative in regard to the results presented. Reviewer #2: I thank the Authors for addressing previous comments. The scope is much more constrained and I find it has improved the work significantly, resulting in a methods paper that domestication workers will find useful in the design of larger studies, and very informative on the challenges of behavioral studies outside of laboratory environments. My full comments are included in a separate word document. Please see the manuscript pdf, however, which is where I tracked the grammatical edits, of which there were numerous. I took the liberty of suggesting better word structure, but these are simply my suggestions, of course. ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes: Ana Balcarcel ********** [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 |
PONE-D-23-22870R2Street-wise dog testing: feasibility and reliability of a behavioural test battery for free-ranging dogs in their natural habitatPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Capitain, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 18 2024 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, Joshua Kamani, PhD 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: Dear authors I am glad to inform you that your manuscript have been reviewed and you need to address some minor issues. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? 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The manuscript is clearer, has better direction and accomplishes its goals of providing a baseline for behavioral tests of street/free-ranging dogs. It was very interesting to see how these tests are conducted, what the challenges are, and that they can, in fact, provide reliable information about certain behaviors in the variable conditions outside the “pet” environment. ********** 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. 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Revision 3 |
Street-wise dog testing: feasibility and reliability of a behavioural test battery for free-ranging dogs in their natural habitat PONE-D-23-22870R3 Dear Dr. Svenja Capitain, 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, Joshua Kamani, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-23-22870R3 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Capitain, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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. Joshua Kamani Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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