PONE-D-25-16194Fine-scale associational effects: single plant neighbours can alter susceptibility of focal plants to herbivoresPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Finnerty,

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.

Both reviewers offer minor suggestions to improve clarity and coherence, such as refining the introduction by including plant descriptions earlier, adjusting figure legends for clarity, and considering alternative explanations for results based on environmental factors. Additionally, one reviewer recommends replacing numerical notation (e.g., (1), (2)) with clearer wording, while the other suggests defining key terms like "neighborhood" earlier and ensuring Aims are referred to by their specific content rather than labels. Overall, the feedback is highly positive, with both reviewers commending the novelty of the study and its contribution to the field.

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Showkat Ahmad Ganie, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Reviewers offer minor suggestions to improve clarity and coherence, such as refining the introduction by including plant descriptions earlier, adjusting figure legends for clarity, and considering alternative explanations for results based on environmental factors. Additionally, one reviewer recommends replacing numerical notation (e.g., (1), (2)) with clearer wording, while the other suggests defining key terms like "neighborhood" earlier and ensuring Aims are referred to by their specific content rather than labels. Overall, the feedback is highly positive, with both reviewers commending the novelty of the study and its contribution to the field.

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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

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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: Review of PONE-D-25-16194 “Fine-scale associational effects: single plant neighbours can alter susceptibility of focal plants to herbivores”

The authors describe a well-designed study that determined that a single unpalatable plant can reduce visitation and browsing of a palatable plant. The methodology and analysis of the experiment are sound and the results are both important and interesting. I just have a few minor comments that I hope will help with the clarity of the manuscript.

Introduction: Lines 95-100 The herbivore used for the study, the swamp wallaby, is described but not the plants used. A sentence or two about your three plants selected for the study would be helpful here. That information is provided in material and methods so could just be moved into the introduction.

Materials and Methods: Lines 124-127: Naturally occurring B. pinnata shrubs were used, while nursery grown E. punctata and C. gummifera were used. You state the size of the nursery grown plants were of similar size but did not give any description of the size of the B. pinnata plants chosen. Did you choose B. pinnata plants of similar size? If you did please include that information in methods. If similarly sized B. pinnata were not chosen that needs to be addressed as a possible limitation to the study.

Material and methods, results, and figures: For Aim 1 and 2, you use the term Pair or Treatment and then (1),(2) etc to denote your different Pairs or Treatments. The (#) is often distracting and makes the number seem important rather than just denoting the different pairs or treatments. I suggest removing the () around your numbers. It is especially distracting in the figure legends since there are (a), (b) etc to denote which panel is being described.

Figures: Figure 6 legend: lines 294-297 need to describe what panels (a), (b), and (c) denote.

Discussion: Lines 375-387: Reasons for why more of the focal plant E. punctata was foraged in Aim 2 versus Aim 1 are discussed here. Is it also possible that the reason more E. punctate was foraged on in Aim 2 is that the plots seem to have less undergrowth/browse nearby than the plots in Aim 1. I am basing this off the pictures of the experimental setups in Figures 2 and 3.

Reviewer #2: This is an excellent manuscript that sheds new light on the understudied question of how small a plant’s neighborhood can be while still influencing its susceptibility to herbivores. By shifting focus to the smallest spatial scale at which neighborhood effects operate, the authors provide a novel perspective on plant–herbivore interactions. This manuscript was well-written, the experimental design and statistical approaches were robust, and the interpretations of the data appropriate. This manuscript was a delight to review. I have a few general, but minor comments that I think would strengthen the manuscript.

A general suggestion: This manuscript has a quite a few moving parts with multiple plant species and combinations and numbers of said species. Given this, it can be hard to keep track of what “Aim 1” vs. “Aim 2” when they are used in a sentence out of context (e.g. L376). While I think it is fine to name them Aim 1 and Aim 2, I suggest referring to them based on their content (i.e., what they are actually testing).

The opening paragraph is well-written, however, I think a few tweaks to it might strengthen the foundational ideas for the rest of the manuscript. For example:

L43: I think it might be helpful to define a neighborhood (in your context) here, given that it is a term heavily used through the manuscript. For example, it might be useful to say something along the lines of “The assemblage of plants in a patch forms a neighborhood, which can…”

L46: I suggest adding an additional sentence between the ones that start and end on L46 to set up the idea that the neighborhood can either have a positive or negative effect on a given plant. The sentence beginning with 'When herbivores…' could be revised to start with 'For example, when herbivores…,' which would create a smoother transition and more clearly set up the contrast with the following sentence that begins 'In contrast…,' highlighting the opposing effects of a neighborhood.

In the Statistical Analysis section:

L185: Is it possible to include this information elsewhere to omit an orphan paragraph?

In the Discussion:

L368-374: Might it be possible that more plants could emit a strong smell that might be detectable from larger distances? Ultimately, this could influence the distance at which decisions could be made rather than the choice itself.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Fine-scale associational effects: single plant neighbours can alter susceptibility of focal plants to herbivores

PONE-D-25-16194R1

Dear Dr. Finnerty,

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.

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Kind regards,

Showkat Ahmad Ganie, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The manuscript can be accepted for publication in PLOS one.

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: All comments have been addressed

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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

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All of my suggestions have been carefully and thoughtfully addressed. I appreciate the changes the authors made and I have no further comments.

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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: No

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