Knowledge increases informative reporting by the public about urban coyotes

Abby Keller; Carly Sponarski; Chrystal Coleman; Colleen Cassady St. Clair

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0307728

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 16, 2024
16 Jul 2024 Author Response https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307728.r001
16 Oct 2024 Decision Letter - Vanessa Carels, Editor PONE-D-24-28515Knowledge of risks associated with food-conditioned coyotes increases the likelihood of informative reports by the publicPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Keller, 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 Nov 29 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, Vanessa Carels Staff Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: This research was supported by a Natural Sciences And Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant (RES0061126) awarded to CCSC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection or analysis, manuscript preparation, or the decision to publish. Please provide an amended statement that declares all the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended Funding Statement within 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: We respectfully acknowledge that our work was conducted on Treaty 6 Territory, which is a traditional gathering place for many Indigenous peoples, including the Anishinaabe/Ojibway/Salteaux, Blackfoot, Cree, Dene, Inuit, Iroquois, Nakota Sioux, Métis, and others. We thank the City of Edmonton staff who helped develop and implement the survey: Shawn Beskowiney, Jennifer Bewick, Troy Courtoreille, Denise Dion, Vishal Dutt, Greg Komarniski, Ryan Smar, Gareth Villanueva, Doug Yaceyko, and Shan Yang. We are grateful to the thousands of Edmonton residents who took the time to respond to the survey, providing us with a wealth of useful data. We are also thankful to Dr. Matthew Johnson for helpful guidance and feedback on early versions of this manuscript. Funding for this study was provided by an Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship to ALK, a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant to CCSC (RGPIN-2023-04892), and the University of Alberta. We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, 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 research was supported by a Natural Sciences And Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant (RES0061126) awarded to CCSC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection or analysis, manuscript preparation, or the decision to publish. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Please note that your Data Availability Statement is currently missing the DOI/accession number of each dataset OR a direct link to access each database. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, you will be asked to provide these details on a very short timeline. We therefore suggest that you provide this information now, though we will not hold up the peer review process if you are unable. 5. When completing the data availability statement of the submission form, you indicated that you will make your data available on acceptance. We strongly recommend all authors decide on a data sharing plan before acceptance, as the process can be lengthy and hold up publication timelines. Please note that, though access restrictions are acceptable now, your entire data will need to be made freely accessible if your manuscript is accepted for publication. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If you are unable to adhere to our open data policy, please kindly revise your statement to explain your reasoning and we will seek the editor's input on an exemption. Please be assured that, once you have provided your new statement, the assessment of your exemption will not hold up the peer review process. 6. Please amend either the title on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the title in the manuscript so that they are identical. Additional Editor Comments: Comments from PLOS Editorial Office: We note that one or more reviewers has recommended that you cite specific previously published works. As always, we recommend that you please review and evaluate the requested works to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. It is not a requirement to cite these works. We appreciate your attention to this request. [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 Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: 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: Yes Reviewer #3: No Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: 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 Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: 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 : 1. The title of this paper needs revised 2. Abstract is not well written (IMRaD is a standard format for writing abstracts in an orderly manner ....such as i. Introduction, ii Methodology, iii Results and iv Discussions). A summary of the result is missing from this abstract 3. Some Keywords are not refined enough (e.g The human body posture estimation) 4. The introduction can be enriched by briefly describe the state-of-the-art in the title of this study and provide more recently related references to support foundation of this studies to better context for the current research. I will recommend citing recently published related papers; a. Statistical Analysis of Stakeholders Perception on Adoption of AI/ML in Sustainable Agricultural Practices in Rural Development. In X. S. Yang, S. Sherratt, N. Dey, & A. (. Joshi (Ed.), Proceedings of Ninth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. ICICT 2024 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems. 1003. Springer, Singapore. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3302-6_11 b. Crime Prediction Using Twitter Sentiments and Crime Data. Informatica, 48(6), 35–42. doi: https://doi.org/10.31449/inf.v48i6.4749 5. The problem that author is trying to address in this paper is not clear yet, (clearer motivation for study is required) 6. Add the contribution of this study and study organization towards end of Introduction Section 7. Table 1 title need to be revised 8. In 4-5- lines, authors should summarize the literature gaps identified from the review of the before the methodology section 9. Author should provide the mathematical illustration for the evaluation 10. Services of language expert are required 11. Image quality needs to be improved 12. Ensure that all Figures are properly labeled and referenced 13. Authors should include the future work of this study Reviewer #2: 1- The title needs to be simplified further. 2- The abstract did not indicate the criteria adopted in stating the efficiency of this proposal. 3- Add a paragraph indicating the structure of the research with all its sections. It is placed at the end of the introduction. 4- Explain the related works and the negatives they suffered from and in which this manuscript excels. 5- The work algorithm needs to be simplified and explained in direct and clear points. 6-Where are the conclusions and future work? Reviewer #3: Clarify "Unsure" Responses: It would be helpful to provide more details on how you handled "unsure" responses in the path model. This would add transparency and ensure readers fully understand the treatment of this data. Expand Practical Applications: The discussion could benefit from more details on how the findings can be applied in real-world urban wildlife management, particularly for educational campaigns and improving reporting systems. Explain Unsupported Hypotheses: The reasoning behind some of the unsupported hypotheses, especially the unexpected relationship between knowledge of food conditioning and risk perceptions, needs further clarification to help readers understand these results. Small Effect Sizes: Although the small effect sizes are acknowledged, they may limit the practical significance of the findings. It might be useful to discuss this limitation in more depth. Sample Bias: The sample is somewhat biased toward older, English-speaking respondents. While this is noted, it could impact how generalizable the results are, so it's worth discussing this a bit further. Limited Generalizability: Since the study is focused on Edmonton, the findings may not directly apply to other cities with different urban dynamics or wildlife. This could be emphasized more clearly in the limitations. Reviewer #4: - Based on previous similar works, the authors identified the unsolved challenges and proposed a study to examine how they could less influence the problem-based learning process. - The paper is well-structured and documented. - An overview on related works, some from recent years, is presented. It contains studies from specific literature. - The theoretical background is well explained and properly used. Areas of Improvements - The study has some limitations, which supposed to be identified by the authors and clearly mentioned. - Corrections should be made related to the use of English language. Reviewer #5: Strengths: 1. Large sample size provides good statistical power 2. Use of path analysis allows examination of direct and indirect effects 3. Clear rationale and relevance for urban wildlife management 4. Acknowledgment of limitations Suggestions for improvement: 1. Provide more details on the survey development process and pilot testing 2. Further discuss potential reasons for small effect sizes 3. Expand on management implications, particularly regarding education/communication strategies 4. Consider adding a figure showing the distribution of responses to the two reporting scenarios Overall, this is a well-conducted study that provides useful insights for improving citizen reporting of urban coyote encounters. The findings have practical implications for wildlife managers and public education efforts. ****** 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: Yes: RAOOF ALTAHER Reviewer #4: No Reviewer #5: Yes: Mounica Achanta ******** [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.0307728.r002
Revision 1
9 Dec 2024 Author Response 21 November 2024 Dear Editor, Thank you for the invitation to revise and resubmit the manuscript “Knowledge of risks associated with food-conditioned by coyotes increases the likelihood of informative reporting by the public”. We are grateful for the helpful feedback from you and several reviewers and have adjusted the manuscript according to these suggestions. We provide a summary of those changes below and detail the changes on the following pages. Our main changes were to simplify the title, refine keywords, improve figure image quality, correct typos and unclear language, and ensure the document complies with PLOS ONE formatting guidelines. We also edited the abstract to improve clarity and ensure it follows the IMRaD framework, added details and clarified phrasing about some background information, the goal of our study, and how and why we employed path analysis, and explained how we handled missing data. We elaborated on the limitations of our study, the implications our limitations have on the interpretation and application of our results, and how our approach can be applied to other human-wildlife conflict management contexts. We further explained potential future work that could stem from this path analysis. Finally, we removed funding information from the Acknowledgements section and amended our funding statement. At the end of this letter, we copied the reviewers’ comments. We followed each comment with a description of how we addressed it (in the attached docx version of this letter, this also includes a screenshot showing the changes that we made). Thanks for your attention to our manuscript; we look forward to your further news. Sincerely, Abby L. Keller Reviewer #1: 1. The title of this paper needs revised We simplified the title while retaining key information as follows: 2. Abstract is not well written (IMRaD is a standard format for writing abstracts in an orderly manner ...such as i. Introduction, ii Methodology, iii Results and iv Discussions). A summary of the result is missing from this abstract Our previous abstract followed this order, but we adjusted its content to illustrate the key results of our path model more clearly. 3. Some Keywords are not refined enough (e.g The human body posture estimation) We refined the keywords to increase their relevance. 4. The introduction can be enriched by briefly describe the state-of-the-art in the title of this study and provide more recently related references to support foundation of this studies to better context for the current research. I will recommend citing recently published related papers; a. Statistical Analysis of Stakeholders Perception on Adoption of AI/ML in Sustainable Agricultural Practices in Rural Development. In X. S. Yang, S. Sherratt, N. Dey, & A. (. Joshi (Ed.), Proceedings of Ninth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. ICICT 2024 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems. 1003. Springer, Singapore. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3302-6_11 b. Crime Prediction Using Twitter Sentiments and Crime Data. Informatica, 48(6), 35–42. doi: https://doi.org/10.31449/inf.v48i6.4749 We reviewed these suggestions carefully but did not see how we could incorporate them into this paper. We’ll keep these references for potential future work though. 5. The problem that author is trying to address in this paper is not clear yet, (clearer motivation for study is required) We adjusted the introduction to more clearly outline the problem we are addressing. 6. Add the contribution of this study and study organization towards end of Introduction Section We added more details about the contribution of our study to the literature and the structure of our approach. 7. Table 1 title need to be revised We adjusted the title to increase clarity. 8. In 4-5- lines, authors should summarize the literature gaps identified from the review of the before the methodology section We added some additional information explaining relevant gaps in the literature and how our approach contributes to the literature about human-wildlife conflict reporting. 9. Author should provide the mathematical illustration for the evaluation We elaborated on our rationale for using path analysis and added a citation that provides more information about how such models are handled mathematically. 10. Services of language expert are required We reviewed the English throughout the manuscript. 11. Image quality needs to be improved We increased the resolution of images, ensuring each had a dpi of 300 and that the dimensions aligned with PLOS ONE’s figure formatting guidelines. 12. Ensure that all Figures are properly labeled and referenced We reviewed and reined figure captions and labelling. E.g., 13. Authors should include the future work of this study We added more information about how our approach could be applied in other contexts of human-wildlife conflict and elaborated on potential future work. Reviewer #2: 1- The title needs to be simplified further. We simplified the title while ensuring it remains informative. 2- The abstract did not indicate the criteria adopted in stating the efficiency of this proposal. We aren’t sure what is meant by this comment, but we reassessed the adherence of our abstract to contain the conventional information (IMRaD) and edited it to improve clarity and flow. 3- Add a paragraph indicating the structure of the research with all its sections. It is placed at the end of the introduction We adjusted some phrasing and more clearly illustrated the structure of our approach but did not add an additional paragraph, preferring to keep additional details about our approach in the methods section which is consistent with published examples in PLOS ONE. 4- Explain the related works and the negatives they suffered from and in which this manuscript excels. We elaborated on the gaps in the literature and limitations of past papers while more clearly explaining how this manuscript addresses these gaps and limitations. 5- The work algorithm needs to be simplified and explained in direct and clear points. We reviewed the methods for clarity and completeness and added several details. 6-Where are the conclusions and future work? We increased discussion about our results and the implications of our results with respect to Edmonton’s coyote education campaign and other human-wildlife conflict management contexts and included more explicit details about potential future work. Reviewer #3: Clarify "Unsure" Responses: It would be helpful to provide more details on how you handled "unsure" responses in the path model. This would add transparency and ensure readers fully understand the treatment of this data. We added information to the methods to explain how the WLSMV estimator handles missing values via pairwise deletion. Expand Practical Applications: The discussion could benefit from more details on how the findings can be applied in real-world urban wildlife management, particularly for educational campaigns and improving reporting systems. We added additional detail in the Management implications section explaining how our approach could be tailored to inform education, refine reporting, and support management in other human-wildlife interaction contexts. Explain Unsupported Hypotheses: The reasoning behind some of the unsupported hypotheses, especially the unexpected relationship between knowledge of food conditioning and risk perceptions, needs further clarification to help readers understand these results. In the discussion, we further explained our unsupported hypotheses and why we may have seen these results. Small Effect Sizes: Although the small effect sizes are acknowledged, they may limit the practical significance of the findings. It might be useful to discuss this limitation in more depth. We adjusted phrasing to emphasize the small effect sizes we observed and offered some potential reasons for them. Sample Bias: The sample is somewhat biased toward older, English-speaking respondents. While this is noted, it could impact how generalizable the results are, so it's worth discussing this a bit further. We included more details about how the bias in our sample may affect the generalizability of our results. Limited Generalizability: Since the study is focused on Edmonton, the findings may not directly apply to other cities with different urban dynamics or wildlife. This could be emphasized more clearly in the limitations. Similarly to above, we better explained how our focus on Edmonton presents limitations for generalizing our results to other municipalities or species. We also included more explanation about how our approach, rather than our exact results, can be applied to human-wildlife conflict reporting and management in other locations and contexts. Reviewer #4: - Based on previous similar works, the authors identified the unsolved challenges and proposed a study to examine how they could less influence the problem-based learning process. - The paper is well-structured and documented. - An overview on related works, some from recent years, is presented. It contains studies from specific literature. - The theoretical background is well explained and properly used. Thank you for the positive feedback. Areas of Improvements - The study has some limitations, which supposed to be identified by the authors and clearly mentioned. We changed some phrasing to be more explicit about our limitations and their implications for interpreting our results. - Corrections should be made related to the use of English language. We reviewed the entire manuscript to identify grammatical errors and awkward passages and adjusted several sentences to increase clarity. Reviewer #5: Strengths: 1. Large sample size provides good statistical power 2. Use of path analysis allows examination of direct and indirect effects 3. Clear rationale and relevance for urban wildlife management 4. Acknowledgment of limitations Thank you for these comments; we appreciate them. Suggestions for improvement: 1. Provide more details on the survey development process and pilot testing We added some details to the methods to explain how we developed the survey. It was reviewed by several individuals at the City of Edmonton, but there was no pilot version, which we now explain. 2. Further discuss potential reasons for small effect sizes We further explained why we may have seen small effect sizes. 3. Expand on management implications, particularly regarding education/communication strategies Thank you for this suggestion. We adjusted some phrasing to improve clarity and further explained how our results can be applied to Edmonton’s coyote education campaign and how our approach can be used in other locations and contexts. 4. Consider adding a figure showing the distribution of responses to the two reporting scenarios We appreciated this suggestion and added a bar plot as Figure 2 showing the distribution of responses to the scenarios. The final path model results are now shown in Fig 3. Overall, this is a well-conducted study that provides useful insights for improving citizen reporting of urban coyote encounters. The findings have practical implications for wildlife managers and public education efforts. Thank you. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307728.r003
16 Jan 2025 Decision Letter - Stephanie Romanach, Editor PONE-D-24-28515R1Knowledge increases informative reporting by the public about urban coyotesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Keller, 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. We appreciate your patience with the review process for your original submission. When I took over as AE for your revised manuscript, I reviewed the manuscript myself and recruited another reviewer (Reviewer #6) with expertise in carnivore conservation at the interface of human activity. Below you will also find a review (Reviewer #4) provided by one of your previous reviewers who does not have expertise in your field -- you can ignore those comments, Below you will find a few comments for your consideration, Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 02 2025 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, Stephanie S. Romanach, 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 #4: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #6: (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 #4: Yes Reviewer #6: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #4: I Don't Know Reviewer #6: 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 #4: Yes Reviewer #6: 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 #4: Yes Reviewer #6: 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 #4: Authors have incorporated the mentioned changes as raised in earlier version. Overall, the paper is good, organised, well written and the content is significant for the field related to the problem-based learning approaches in computer science. Reviewer #6: This study uses a thorough social survey and complimentary statistical analysis to evaluate the effects of personal experience, knowledge, and demographic factors on the likelihood of efficient reporting of human-coyote conflict. This is a widely relevant topic as coyote populations are flourishing in urban areas across the continent, and community reporting of wildlife conflict is becoming increasingly common worldwide. The paper's methods are fully appropriate for the questions being asked, and I believe the statistical approach to be sound. I was impressed with the survey response rate. The major statistical limitation is that the manner of calculating reporting effectiveness left very little variation in the model's primary response variable, leading to small effect sizes and somewhat tenuous interpretation of the outputs. Did the authors try and perform the same analysis on other versions of the response variable, like the raw score of likelihood to report a conflict sighting (without subtracting the benign score)? I am curious how this would change the results or if more resolution could be gained. As mentioned by other reviewers, the embedded figures were low resolution but that may have been addressed with additional file uploads. The manuscript's writing/grammar showed no issues, and it is overall well-written and understandable. Line comments: 275: Remove the word 'greater' 303-305: Was this result presented in the paper? If not, some support is needed ****** 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 #4: No Reviewer #6: 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.0307728.r004
Revision 2
2 Apr 2025 Author Response Thank you for reviewing our manuscript. Below are responses to specific comments. These comments, along with screenshots showing the changes made to the manuscript, are also included in our Response to Reviewers letter. Reviewer #4: Authors have incorporated the mentioned changes as raised in earlier version. Overall, the paper is good, organised, well written and the content is significant for the field related to the problem-based learning approaches in computer science. Thank you. Reviewer #6: This study uses a thorough social survey and complimentary statistical analysis to evaluate the effects of personal experience, knowledge, and demographic factors on the likelihood of efficient reporting of human-coyote conflict. This is a widely relevant topic as coyote populations are flourishing in urban areas across the continent, and community reporting of wildlife conflict is becoming increasingly common worldwide. The paper's methods are fully appropriate for the questions being asked, and I believe the statistical approach to be sound. I was impressed with the survey response rate. Thank you. The major statistical limitation is that the manner of calculating reporting effectiveness left very little variation in the model's primary response variable, leading to small effect sizes and somewhat tenuous interpretation of the outputs. Did the authors try and perform the same analysis on other versions of the response variable, like the raw score of likelihood to report a conflict sighting (without subtracting the benign score)? I am curious how this would change the results or if more resolution could be gained. Thank you for this suggestion. Following this, we ran another version of the model with the raw score of likelihood to report a benign sighting as the response variable. We chose to use the benign sighting score rather than the conflict-prone score because we felt understanding what factors predict anticipated reporting of the benign scenario could better support the City of Edmonton’s goal of reducing the volume of reports received about benign sightings of coyotes. We placed this new model before our original model throughout the text for the sake of flow and clarity with respect to our original model. The results of this model provided further support for and helped us to refine our recommendations for a coyote education campaign aimed at reducing reports of benign sightings and encouraging reports of conflict-prone coyotes. As mentioned by other reviewers, the embedded figures were low resolution but that may have been addressed with additional file uploads. The manuscript's writing/grammar showed no issues, and it is overall well-written and understandable. Line comments: 275: Remove the word 'greater' Done. 303-305: Was this result presented in the paper? If not, some support is needed Thanks for catching this. We did not explicitly present this in the results, but we added a reference to Appendix A, where the responses to the risk items are presented in detail. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_auresp_2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307728.r005
10 Apr 2025 Decision Letter - Stephanie Romanach, Editor Knowledge increases informative reporting by the public about urban coyotes PONE-D-24-28515R2 Dear Dr. Keller, 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, Stephanie S. Romanach, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307728.r006
Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Stephanie Romanach, Editor PONE-D-24-28515R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Keller, 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 You will receive further instructions from the production team, including instructions on how to review your proof when it is ready. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few days 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. Stephanie S. Romanach Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307728.r007

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 .