Projected Shifts in Bird Distribution in India under Climate Change
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Here, I review the manuscript "Projected shifts in bird distribution in India under climate change" by the authors Deomurari, Sharma, Ghose, and Singh, submitted for review and subsequent publication in Diversity. The manuscript aims to predict the spatial distribution of 1091 species of birds to study future species range shifts under two climatic projections. The manuscript is well written, and most of my comments are meant to contribute to the clarity of the manuscript and increase its impact and public visibility. First, since the journal to which the manuscript was submitted is open, I highly suggest that the authors will publish their initial and final occurrence dataset alongside the manuscript as supplementary material. Moreover, all R codes used to produce the results should also be public to increase the reproducibility of the results. Second, I am wondering whether including topographic variables to study species range shifts in the context of simple species distribution models is the best. I understand that elevation is an essential factor; however, in the context of climate change, I think a joint species distribution model approach would be more appropriate, where the effect of elevation would be used as a covariate, and its variance would be taken into account separately and using the climate variables (that are changing) to be used in the final models. As such, I recommend performing further analyses where the variation of the topographic variables that are found to be particularly important to be taken separately into account and report the variation explained by the climate variables. The results can be reported: topographic only (factoring out climate), joint effects (explained by both climate and topography), and climate only (factoring out topography). Looking forward to seeing a revised version of the manuscript.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1
[ Comment 1] Here, I review the manuscript "Projected shifts in bird distribution in India under climate change" by the authors Deomurari, Sharma, Ghose, and Singh, submitted for review and subsequent publication in Diversity. The manuscript aims to predict the spatial distribution of 1091 species of birds to study future species range shifts under two climatic projections. The manuscript is well written, and most of my comments are meant to contribute to the clarity of the manuscript and increase its impact and public visibility.
[ Response 1] The authors sincerely appreciate your acknowledgment of our article, as well as your careful review and thoughtful suggestions. We are grateful for your input!
[ Comment 2] First, since the journal to which the manuscript was submitted is open, I highly suggest that the authors will publish their initial and final occurrence dataset alongside the manuscript as supplementary material. Moreover, all R codes used to produce the results should also be public to increase the reproducibility of the results.
[ Response 2] The reviewer makes an excellent point in suggesting that sharing of datasets and code would not only benefit and encourage other researchers, but also help to ensure the reproducibility of results. We appreciate your advice and in response to your suggestions, will be sure to publish our initial and final occurrence dataset, as well as the R codes used to produce the research, alongside the manuscript as hosted over public repository like GitHub. This will certainly contribute to greater transparency and allow other researchers to replicate our findings. We appreciate your feedback!
[ Comment 3] Second, I am wondering whether including topographic variables to study species range shifts in the context of simple species distribution models is the best. I understand that elevation is an essential factor; however, in the context of climate change, I think a joint species distribution model approach would be more appropriate, where the effect of elevation would be used as a covariate, and its variance would be taken into account separately and using the climate variables (that are changing) to be used in the final models. As such, I recommend performing further analyses where the variation of the topographic variables that are found to be particularly important to be taken separately into account and report the variation explained by the climate variables. The results can be reported: topographic only (factoring out climate), joint effects (explained by both climate and topography), and climate only (factoring out topography). Looking forward to seeing a revised version of the manuscript.
[ Response 3] Your reasoning for using the joint species distribution model and separately including the effect of elevation as a covariate is critical, and it may provide additional insight into the effects of topographic variables on species distribution. It would be interesting to see what the results reveal, in terms of considering only topography, only climate, and their joint effects.
We sincerely appreciate your valuable opinion. However, our focus of the study was to evaluate the climate change impact on Indian bird’s distribution and range shifts. Thus, we mixed topographic and climatic variables for the model calibration following. [1–7].
Also due to limited resources and computing facilities carrying our reanalysis will be difficult. Our current analysis covering 1091 species took nearly 300 days with 2.4GHz 4-core workstation.
References:
- Li, Y.; Ding, C. Effects of Sample Size, Sample Accuracy and Environmental Variables on Predictive Performance of MaxEnt Model. pjoe 2016, 64, 303–312, doi:10.3161/15052249PJE2016.64.3.001.
- Kübler, D.; Hildebrandt, P.; Günter, S.; Stimm, B.; Weber, M.; Mosandl, R.; Muñoz, J.; Cabrera, O.; Aguirre, N.; Zeilinger, J.; et al. Assessing the Importance of Topographic Variables for the Spatial Distribution of Tree Species in a Tropical Mountain Forest. Erdkunde 2016, 70, 19–47, doi:10.3112/erdkunde.2016.01.03.
- Bradie, J.; Leung, B. A Quantitative Synthesis of the Importance of Variables Used in MaxEnt Species Distribution Models. Journal of Biogeography 2017, 44, 1344–1361, doi:10.1111/jbi.12894.
- Wilson, J.W.; Sexton, J.O.; Todd Jobe, R.; Haddad, N.M. The Relative Contribution of Terrain, Land Cover, and Vegetation Structure Indices to Species Distribution Models. Biological Conservation 2013, 164, 170–176, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2013.04.021.
- Dudov, S.V. Modeling of Species Distribution with the Use of Topography and Remote Sensing Data on the Example of Vascular Plants of the Tukuringra Ridge Low Mountain Belt (Zeya State Nature Reserve, Amur Oblast). Biol Bull Rev 2017, 7, 246–257, doi:10.1134/S2079086417030021.
- Lannuzel, G.; Balmot, J.; Dubos, N.; Thibault, M.; Fogliani, B. High-Resolution Topographic Variables Accurately Predict the Distribution of Rare Plant Species for Conservation Area Selection in a Narrow-Endemism Hotspot in New Caledonia. Biodivers Conserv 2021, 30, 963–990, doi:10.1007/s10531-021-02126-6.
- Title, P.O.; Bemmels, J.B. ENVIREM: An Expanded Set of Bioclimatic Variables Improves Ecological Niche Modeling Performance. In preparation for submission to Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2016, 1–48, doi:10.1101/075200.
Reviewer 2 Report
The scientific article published by Arpit Deomurari, Ajay Sharma, Dipankar Ghose, and Randeep Singh, titled "Projected shifts in bird distribution in India under climate change", is extremely interesting, and I believe it highlights all the characteristic elements in bird distribution in the context of global climate change. However, I believe that the RCP 6.0 scenario should have been discussed instead of the RCP 8.5 scenario.
However, a number of modifications to the graphics materials require a series of improvements.
The font for all the maps must be higher! Is very hard to read and to understand the map legend.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2
[ Comment 1] The scientific article published by Arpit Deomurari, Ajay Sharma, Dipankar Ghose, and Randeep Singh, titled "Projected shifts in bird distribution in India under climate change", is extremely interesting, and I believe it highlights all the characteristic elements in bird distribution in the context of global climate change.
[ Response 1] The authors are grateful for your recognition of our article, as well as your thorough review and insightful suggestions. We highly appreciate your inputs!
[ Comment 2] However, I believe that the RCP 6.0 scenario should have been discussed instead of the RCP 8.5 scenario.
[ Response 2] Thank you for valuable suggestions on inclusion of RCP 6.0, however we will not be able to carry out additional analysis for 1091 species for RCP 6.0, as the current analysis took nearly 300 days with 2.4GHz 4-core workstation.
[ Comment 3] However, a number of modifications to the graphics materials require a series of improvements.
The font for all the maps must be higher! Is very hard to read and to understand the map legend.
[ Response 3] Thank you for valuable suggestions on the graphic materials. We have submitted the revised manuscripts, upon final acceptance if required we will submit new enhanced graphics as per journal’s requirements.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3
[ Comment 1] The study is focused on analyses of different climate warming scenarios of IPCC on birds in India using open access applications eBird and GBIF for data sets preparation for Species Distribution Modelling with MaxEnt. Study has reasonable design, results and conclusions. I only found two major problems:
[ Response 1] The authors are grateful for your recognition of our article, as well as your thorough review and insightful suggestions. We highly appreciate your inputs!
[ Comment 2] (1) lack of acceptable hypotheses or research questions in the introduction focused on scientific predictions of global warming scenarios on birds in India and
(2) very short discussion with lack of comparison of major findings and conclusions with the global literature on this topic. In the introduction, there are high number of cited studies on species level impacts on birds, plants and mammals that are not further reviewed with the study results. A serious review of cited literature and other studies from different regions is very needed.
[ Response 2] Considering your valuable suggestion, we have now revised the Introduction and Discussion sections to clearly state our hypotheses and/or research question and to emphasise the contribution of this study in filling knowledge gaps in the existing and past literature. For more information, please see the revised text (highligheted) in the manuscript. Specific comments:
[ Comment 3] I also some find some minor problems in the text e.g., need of clarification of some applied measures, numbers in text does not correspond with the ones in the tables,
the discussion needs rewriting due to strange structure. Overall, I evaluate the study as acceptable for the journal Diversity after major revision.
[ Response 3] We have rewritten the Discussion section and reconciled numbers in the text and tables. We are thankful to the reviewer for noticing these errors.
[ Comment 4] P6L272-281: To what sing „±“ refer to? 95% confidence intervals or some other statistics?
[ Response 4] „±“ refers to the Standard Deviation. We have now explicitly stated that the signs are standard deviation. Please see the revised manuscript
[ Comment 5] P7L299: The numbers of critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable birds do not sum 64 threatened species presented in Table 2.
[ Response 5] Thank you very much for thoroughly looking in to the manuscript. We have now fixed the error and corrected the manuscript with the correct figure, and have also added species numbers in the text. Please see the revised manuscript.
[ Comment 6] P7L302: The number of mean reduced ranges is 59.21 in Table 2 and 58.21 in the text.
[ Response 6] We have now corrected the manuscript with correct numbers matching Table 2. Please see the revised manuscript.
[ Comment 7] P7L305: The numbers 62% in the text does not fit 62.88 in Table 3.
[ Response 7] We have corrected the manuscript with correct numbers matching Table 2. Please see the revised manuscript.
[ Comment 8 ] P11Discussion: I would strongly suggest to start discussion with summarizing the main findings of this study in a brief way.
[ Response 8] We have revised the Discussion section as per your valuable input. Please see the revised manuscript.
[ Comment 9] Lines 409-412 should be rewritten and moved to the beginning. Discussion lacks any deeper review of cited Indian literature nor global literature from other regions on this topic.
[ Response 9] We have revised the Discussion section as per your valuable input. Please see the revised manuscript.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
If the occurrence dataset alongside the R code used in this paper is posted on GitHub or a similar repository, I think the edits provided by the authors are enough to ensure a quality published paper. As for now, in the data availability statement, nothing is mentioned that the occurrence dataset alongside the R code used in this paper is available on a GitHub or a similar repository.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1
[ Comment 1] If the occurrence dataset alongside the R code used in this paper is posted on GitHub or a similar repository, I think the edits provided by the authors are enough to ensure a quality published paper. As for now, in the data availability statement, nothing is mentioned that the occurrence dataset alongside the R code used in this paper is available on a GitHub or a similar repository.
[ Response 1] The authors are appreciative of your recognition of our article, as well as your comprehensive review and insightful comments. We greatly appreciate your contributions!
The occurrence datasets used in study is under eBird Public Data terms and condition (https://ebird.org/india/about/ebird-terms-conditions) which prohibits the redistribution of the datasets. Additionally, this occurrence dataset includes Sensitive Species in eBird, which are species for which it is known that disclosure of site-level records could cause harm. As a result, authors prefer not to redistribute data. Additionally, registered users can easily access these datasets from the eBird Portal.
Code and resulting datasets will be hosted on https://github.com/arpitdeomurari/IndianBirds_ClimateChange and will be archived in Zenodo once accepted.
We have included the repository location in the manuscript data availability statement. For more information, please see the revised text (highlighted in yellow) in the manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3
[ Comment 1] I checked the corrected manuscript and have to state that it was significantly improved and all major comments were fixed. I found only very few problematic parts that should be improved and corrected. After corrections of these parts, the manuscript can be accepted for publication to the journal Diversity. These comments are listed as follows:
[ Response 1] The authors appreciate your positive attention to and thoughtful comments on our work. Your feedback is greatly valued.
[ Comment 2] P6L262-263, L267-277: Be consisted with presentation of numbers and use one standard i.e. natural numbers or numbers with two decimal points.
[ Response 2] We have corrected the numbers in the manuscript by representing all decimal places with two decimal points. For more information, please see the revised text (highlighted in yellow) in the manuscript.
[ Comment 3] P6L275-277: Specify to which scenario this sentence belong to? RCP 4.5 or 8.5? It is not clear.
[ Response 3] We have corrected the manuscript specifying both RCP scenarios details to avoid confusion. For more information, please see the revised text (highlighted in yellow) in the manuscript.
