Cortisol levels, heart rate, and autonomic responses in horses during repeated road transport with differently conditioned trucks in a tropical environment

Siengsaw Lertratanachai; Chanoknun Poochipakorn; Kanokpan Sanigavatee; Onjira Huangsaksri; Thita Wonghanchao; Ponlakrit Charoenchanikran; Chaipat Lawsirirat; Metha Chanda

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0301885

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 24, 2024
5 Aug 2024 Decision Letter - Chris Rogers, Editor PONE-D-24-11922Cortisol levels, heart rate, and autonomic responses in horses during repeated road transport with different truck conditions trucks in a tropical environmentPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chanda, 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 Sep 19 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: 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: 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, Chris Rogers 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. 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. 3. We note that Fig S1 in your submission contain [map/satellite] 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: 1. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Fig S1 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].” 2. 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/ 4. 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: Apologies for the delay with this manuscript. We have now secured the number of reviews and i am happy to say it may proceed with the publication process subject to minor revision. [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: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #3: 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 is a very interesting area of study that is important for ensuring best welfare standards in equine transportation management. The manuscript is well written, and uses a comprehensive set of stress response measures nicely, well done. However, it is regrettable that on this occasion the sample size is too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. I look forward to seeing further research investigating this topic, studied in a larger cohort of horses. Reviewer #2: This was an interesting article. Thorough analysis and well presented. I only had a couple of minor comments Line 21 use temperate rather than cold climates here Line 22 did you estimate or did you measure these levels / parameters ? Line 44 number of shows seems low – are you just retrieving data from one discipline – the 150 shows is only 3 per weekend – in Show Jumping alone there are at least 6 to 9 FEI shows each weekend – please check numbers or change text Line 72 temperate rather than cold climates or non-tropical may be better descriptors Table 1 mean drive speed as assume this speed was not constant throughout trial. For materials and methods or similar Given this was travel on a highway is it possible to somehow describe the characteristics of the route ie took 10 mins from loading site until on highway and able to maintain a steady state ? or similar Reviewer #3: This paper is interesting and provides a good approach to examining the stress responses to trucking conditions. The discussion explains the results with good comparison to other literature A few minor comments Please edit p-values so that the p is lowercase and all values are rounded to 3 decimal places. Table 1 and 3 could do with a bit more information in the title to make it standalone Were windows closed during transport? ****** 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 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301885.r001
Revision 1
21 Aug 2024 Author Response Response to the editor and reviewers Title: Cortisol levels, heart rate, and autonomic responses in horses during repeated road transport with differently conditioned trucks in a tropical environment Dear Editor and Reviewers, We’d like to thank you for dedicated time to reviewer our work and give valuable suggestions and comments to improve this manuscript. We’ve addressed all point raised by the editor and reviewers. The corrections are highlighted in green while the statements that have already been mentioned are highlighted in yellow. 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Response to the editor We’ve revised the content and headings according to the journal-style templates. 2. 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. Response to the editor We’ve added the verbal consent and ethical approval statement on pages 4-5, lines 88-90. 3. We note that Fig S1 in your submission contain [map/satellite] 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: Response to the editor We decided to remove the S1 Fig from the manuscript to avoid breaching the copyright. 4. 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. Response to the editor We’ve modified a bit in the reference list by adding the DOI in all journal article to ease the reader tracking those cited article. 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 is a very interesting area of study that is important for ensuring best welfare standards in equine transportation management. The manuscript is well written, and uses a comprehensive set of stress response measures nicely, well done. However, it is regrettable that on this occasion the sample size is too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. I look forward to seeing further research investigating this topic, studied in a larger cohort of horses. Response to the reviewer. We’d like to thank the reviewer for this kind word. We agree that the sample size is too small, and we have addressed this as the limitation of this study. Reviewer #2: This was an interesting article. Thorough analysis and well presented. I only had a couple of minor comments Line 21 use temperate rather than cold climates here Response to the reviewer. We’ve revised it on page 2, line 22 accordingly. Line 22 did you estimate or did you measure these levels / parameters ? Response to the reviewer. We’ve revised it by using measured instead of estimate on page 2, line 23 accordingly. Line 44 number of shows seems low – are you just retrieving data from one discipline – the 150 shows is only 3 per weekend – in Show Jumping alone there are at least 6 to 9 FEI shows each weekend – please check numbers or change text Response to the reviewer. We’d like to thank the reviewer for this notification. We’ve given wrong information. In fact, there are over 3200 shows organizing annually regarding the FEI database. We’ve revised it on page 3, line 45 accordingly. Line 72 temperate rather than cold climates or non-tropical may be better descriptors Table 1 mean drive speed as assume this speed was not constant throughout trial. Response to the reviewer. We’ve revised to use the temperate instead of the cold environment on page 4, line 73, accordingly. Regarding the driving speed, the driver has been constructed to drive approximately 90 km/h according to the speed gadget of the truck. However, they can not keep this speed constant throughout the trip as the speed has sometimes been slowed down due to transient traffic jams or waiting to pay a toll fee. The mean driving speed was computed from the polar flow program with respect to the data from one sports watch placed within the truck of each trip. For materials and methods or similar Given this was travel on a highway is it possible to somehow describe the characteristics of the route ie took 10 mins from loading site until on highway and able to maintain a steady state ? or similar Response to the reviewer. We agree with the reviewer that describing the characteristics of the route may provide clear information to the reader. However, based on the response to the reviewer above, the driver could not keep the speed of 90 km/h as we instructed throughout the trip due to the transient traffic jam or waiting to pay the toll fee. These factors resulted in different driving speeds between the dates of the experiment, even though the trucks were driven on the same route. So, in our opinion, describing the characteristics of the route may confuse the reader rather than give them useful information. Please correct me if I am wrong. Reviewer #3: This paper is interesting and provides a good approach to examining the stress responses to trucking conditions. The discussion explains the results with good comparison to other literature A few minor comments Please edit p-values so that the p is lowercase and all values are rounded to 3 decimal places. Table 1 and 3 could do with a bit more information in the title to make it standalone Were windows closed during transport? Response to the reviewer. We’ve revised all p-vales in lowercase throughout the text accordingly. In a non-air-conditioned truck, the windows were open throughout the trips. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to the reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301885.r002
26 Aug 2024 Decision Letter - Chris Rogers, Editor Cortisol levels, heart rate, and autonomic responses in horses during repeated road transport with differently conditioned trucks in a tropical environment PONE-D-24-11922R1 Dear Dr. Chanda, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Chris Rogers Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for the edits to the manuscript. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301885.r003
Formally Accepted
29 Aug 2024 Acceptance Letter - Chris Rogers, Editor PONE-D-24-11922R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chanda, 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. Chris Rogers Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301885.r004

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 .