Bat Species Diversity and Abundance of Trophic Guilds after a Major Hurricane along an Anthropic Disturbance Gradient

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The presented manuscript is quite interesting, it touches upon important and poorly studied aspects of the impact of natural disasters on the functioning of bat communities and, no less important, the impact of anthropogenic landscape changes on the resistance of bat communities to such disasters. Probably, it will take more than one or two studies of this kind to draw a picture in all its details, but the article under discussion lays an essential basis for such studies.

Thus, I can confidently say that the article under discussion is relevant and scientifically significant. The amount of material, methods and results are quite adequate, the conclusions follow logically from the obtained factual data. It can be added that the article is well written: I never had any complaints about its style, and the questions that arose for the most part disappeared as I read the text. So the comments that have arisen are minimal, and mainly are of a technical nature. The article may be recommended for publication after a minor revision.

 

Lines 102-108: “quiropterophilic flowering” – Still, in the English text it should be 'chiropterophilic' or 'chiropterophilous' (it is noteworthy that everything else in the text it is correct).

Lines 112: “38-mm 112 mesh” – A purely methodological question: is this mesh size suitable for bats in Central America? Some small bats of the Old World may well pass through such a mesh; nets sold in Europe usually have a 16 mm mesh (e.g. https://en.ecotone.com.pl/mist-nets,1,3.html).

Lines 124: “including forearm length (Truper® ± 0.01 mm) and mass (Pesola® ± 1.0 g)” – The accuracy of measurements looks a little strange. An accuracy of 0.01 mm is usually not (I would say - never) achievable for external measurements, and even the length of the forearm, as one of the most reliable of them, is commonly measuring only to tenths of a mm; on the contrary, for small bats, tenths of a gram can be quite significant, and many Pesola models quite allow you to measure body weight down to tenths of a gram.

Line 126: “Alloy Split Rings 2.9 mm” – Again, a methodological question. The bats caught by the authors differ markedly in size. At the same time, one gets the impression that the same ring size was used for all size classes (which is not only wrong, but, from my point of view, technically impossible). Probably, rings were used only for smaller species (within what size range?), and collars - for larger ones. I would ask the authors to clarify the types of individual marks used in relation to different size classes of bats.

Table 1: Sturnira parvidens, judging by the authors' data, is the only species that clearly prefers disturbed habitats. It is interesting why? In the "Discussion" I did not find any mention of this circumstance.

Line 309: “possibly resulting in lower diversity in 2016” – however, line 294 says “diversity was higher in 2016 than in 2017”. Authors are talking about the same place – Chamela. What is the reason for this contradiction?

Line 374: “Damages for Ipomoea were the most severe damages, with uprooted trees” – Firstly, twice ‘damages’ in the same phrase does not look good stylistically. Secondly, I know that there are arborescent Ipomoea species, but most readers know Ipomoea as a climbing herbaceous plant. Apparently, avoiding misunderstanding, it is worth clarifying what species of morning glory authors are talking about.

In the bibliography, for some reason, all references are numbered twice.

Another consideration, comments about which I did not find in the text. The authors link the seasonal difference in the diversity and abundance of bats with the time of flowering and fruiting of plants and with the breeding time (and, accordingly, the appearance of young animals), which is undoubtedly correct. However, the number of caught animals depends not only on their abundance, but also on their activity (intensity and duration of feeding, distance of daily movements). In turn, activity may increase, for example, during pregnancy or lactation (when females need more food); at the same time, high activity can be leveled by the seasonal abundance of food, when, all else being equal, the animals need less time and a shorter distance of movement to search for it. I believe that this circumstance should at least be kept in mind when discussing seasonal dynamics.  

I believe that the responses to these comments and the introduction of appropriate corrections do not present any difficulties for the authors. After that, the manuscript can be recommended for publication in Diversity.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

See attached PDF.  My only suggestion is recasting simply to say you are trying to understand the local assemblage effect of season and storms and then that can serve as a place-holder for making inferences about climate change as we accumulate more years and more data. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf