PONE-D-23-41793COMBINED EFFECTS OF AMBIENT TEMPERATURE AND FOOD AVAILABILITY ON INDUCED INNATE IMMUNE RESPONSE OF A FRUIT-EATING BAT (CAROLLIA PERSPICILLATA)PLOS ONE

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“This study was supported by a grant to A. P. C. N and L. G. H. M. from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP Visiting Research Program #2017‐17607‐ 6).  A. P. C. N.  was supported by a grant from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, Grant #2014/16320-7), and L. G. H. M. by a grant from the PASPA‐DGAPA program of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (#814-2018). M. F. V. was supported by a grant from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Tecnológico (CAPES, Grant #88882.434214/2019-01).”

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Additional Editor Comments:

Your manuscript has been reviewed by an experienced reviewer and by me. We both agree in that the paper is technically sound, and highly interesting, as it sits in the intersection of global environmental changes, comparative immune physiology and zoonosis risk. There are, however, some concerns expressed by the reviewer that need to be addressed before final acceptance.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: In this study, Viola and collaborators evaluated how the isolated and combined effects of changes in ambient temperature and food availability affect selected physiological and behavioral components associated with the innate immune system of fruit-eating bats (Carollia perspicillata) including fever, leukocytosis, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio and bacterial killing ability of the plasma. How the immune system deals with the exposure to new pathogens that will occur with global changes, might affect the interaction between wildlife hosts and pathogens and, thus, can impact the dissemination of emerging diseases and zoonoses. In particular, bats are reservoirs of a number of infectious diseases and understanding how global warming and land-use changes might affect their capacity to cope with zoonotic pathogens is important to understanding the dissemination of emerging infectious diseases. The authors observed no changes in food intake, total white blood cell count and bacteria killing activity after challenge with LPS. However, they observed two significant changes; one in the time to reach the highest increase in body temperature under food restriction and second; the magnitude of increased neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio under food restriction and increased ambient temperature.

The experiments performed are well detailed and rigorous and the parameters analyzed reflect the state of the art regarding the analysis of the immune cell components in non-rodent mammals. In this regard, I only have some few comments on this manuscript:

Could the authors detail why they only considered the effect of changes in ambient temperature and food restriction for only two days? Why the authors analyzed all the parameters only 24 hours following LPS injection? Some parameters of the innate immune response and acute phase response will surely change within that window, but others regarding the adaptive immune response might take longer.

The authors indicate that they observed differences in the time to reach the highest increase in body temperature under food restriction and the magnitude of increased neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio under food restriction and increased ambient temperature. Do these two parameters affect the immune performance when bats are challenged with real pathogens? Is it possible to perform cell-culture experiments? Is it possible to measure serum antibodies or the antiviral response in bats?

Minor:

The excessive use of abbreviations in the manuscript makes it very difficult to read

In line 50, the sentence has an extra punctuation

In line 121, please revise the sentence, as it says "In bats, recent reviews suggested that bats respond selectively to LPS..."

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Reviewer #1: No

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COMBINED EFFECTS OF AMBIENT TEMPERATURE AND FOOD AVAILABILITY ON INDUCED INNATE IMMUNE RESPONSE OF A FRUIT-EATING BAT (CAROLLIA PERSPICILLATA)

PONE-D-23-41793R1

Dear Dr. Herrera M.,

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.

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Kind regards,

Jorge Marin Mpodozis, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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