Habitat Suitability for Small Mammals in Mediterranean Landscapes: How and Why Shrubs Matter
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of Sustainability-1524994
Habitat Suitability for Small Mammals in Mediterranean Landscapes: How and Why Shrubs Matter
Dear Authors,
Understanding the impact of landscape change on mammalian abundance is a timely topic. I read with interest your study on small mammal communities in woodlands and shrublands in northeast Spain. Understanding how the succession of open habitats to forested habitats in landscapes where former agricultural areas are being abandoned poses an important question that is not yet covered adequately in the literature on mammals.
That said, I had substantial difficulty with aspects of your manuscript. Taken together, these concerns make it difficult to recommend your manuscript for publication without substantial revision. Specifically, I found the aim of the study of your study a bit confusing, as well as the modeling strategy used. The presentation would also benefit from further polishing. I elaborate on these substantive comments below, and follow with those of a more minor or editorial nature.
I do hope you find some of my comments helpful in revising your manuscript. I hope to soon see it published.
Substantive Comments:
- The role of fire is vague. The manuscript begins with much discussion on the role and impact of fire in Mediterranean landscapes but the direct link to the 17 sites chosen for study is quite unclear. I suspect that some of these sites had burned (as per page 2 – line 84). But, it is not known how many of these sites burned, when they burned, nor the extent or severity of the burn. I think that the authors are suggesting that fires maintain shrubland habitats, which may (or may not) promote greater abundance of the small mammal species studied, relative to forests. However, this is not clear and details are required, or the authors should not focus so much on the effects of fire, which is not quantified (or well described) in the manuscript. My main point here (and also below) is that the aim of the study is unclear and needs to be much better defined for the reader – specifically what is the question?
- Shifting baseline? I find it odd that the premise of the study is that afforestation of former agricultural areas is a conservation concern. Is this a case of shifting baseline syndrome, with the baseline being the abundance of small mammals in the traditional agricultural landscapes? Surely, if landscapes that were previously deforested by humans are subject to natural succession and returned to natural forest/woodlands, then that is a desirable conservation outcome, even if it means changes to small mammal communities. No? What am I missing. Please state more clearly what the conservation concern is in this landscape.
- Site selection is unclear. Perhaps it is because the aim of the study is a bit unclear, but it is unclear why the authors chose to study pine forest, oak forest, and shrublands. Notwithstanding the comment on page 3, line 116 that the were representative of the region, the reason these 17 plots (of 3 vegetation types) requires much stronger rationale, and the sites should be better characterized. If the aim of the study was to examine small mammals across the range of habitats in a landscape being afforested after land use abondment, then why not also include active agriculture areas as well? Moreover, why the two types of forest (pine and oak)? What do they represent in terms of natural succession and landscape change? How do pine and oak differ with respect to the aims of this study?
- Modeling strategy unclear. First, I find it a bit odd to use PC1 and PC2 as covariates in your GLMM. Why not use combinations of your 12 LiDAR variables directly in the GLMM to build a series of candidate models. Using PC to reduce the small number of covariates does not seem ideal as important information on which of the 12 LiDAR variables drive abundance and richness is lost. (I am okay with use of PCI with regards to Fig. 2). Additionally, Table 1 presents the results of only one model for each species (as well as Total and Richness). I assume that this is the top candidate model for each species, but that is not clear. Please clarify if a series of candidate models -- using the suite of fixed and random effects as well as null and global models -- were developed. This is not apparent and it needs to be. I would suggest that tables with the top 5-10 candidate models for each species (and Total and Richness) be made available as supplemental material (or in the main text).
- Presentation needs polished. Unfortunately, the manuscript is a bit ‘rough’ yet and requires substantial polishing to improve clarity and logical flow, as well as formating. I point to several (but not all) passages and areas for improvement. The authors are encouraged to significantly refine the language and formatting.
Detailed Comments:
Lines 11-13. Awkward phrasing. Reword along the lines of: “Fires may maintan open habitats (shrublands), which may benefit small mammals communities by reducing predation pressure, predation risk, and interspecific competition, and increasing food availability.”
Lines 14. Insert “from” before “extreme”
Line 16. Replace “In this article we analyze” with “We analyzed”
Line 17: The following is phrased awkwardly and needs reworded: “Our hypothesis is that shrubs are essential for the conservation of Mediterranean small mammal communities, and that shrub cover and shrub selection by small mammals is mainly determined by the post-fire succession.” Moreover, I don’t think this is a testable hypothesis as stated. Finally, please use past tense.
Line 17: “which in turn” Not turns. Needs changed throughout the text.
Line 46: Delete “and the associated forest-dwelling animals”
Line 48: Delete “Despite”
Line 58: This whole paragraph is out of place. I suggest it be moved to the Methods (i.e. ~Page 4, Line 124).
Line 61: Replace “difficult to measure and subjective by an observer on the ground” with “and subject to observer bias”
Line 65: Delete “overcoming field survey drawbacks at affordable costs.”
Line 67: Replace “In this article we present a conceptual framework explaining the observed” with “Here, we examined”. I don’t see this paper providing a conceptual framework per se.
Line 74: The hypothesis stated is crucial (see Substantive Comments above), but it is rather weakly stated here. Please clarify and provide citations of previous work that led to (or support) this hypothesis. A couple of meaty sentences would be warranted here and help focus the manuscript for the reader.
Line 82: Replace “fig.1” with “Fig. 1”
Line 84: Can you be more specific than “huge”? Also, what burned – woodlands?
Fig. 1: I am a bit surprised that the legend and caption refer to ‘mixed woodland’ rather than ‘holm oak’ like the text. Please clarify in the text (subsection 2.1 or 2.3) what the holm oak woodlands were.
Lines 106-108: Please ensure that the information provided for both trap models is consistent (i.e., size, manufactorer details). Currently it is not.
Line 106: Why two different trap models? Please justify this.
Line 110: Replace “revise” with “checked”
Line 11: Delete “The”
Line 112: Provide consistent information on the type and manufacturer of the ear tags. Also, this sentence is awkward and needs reprhased.
Lines 116-123: Suggest moving this paragraph to subsection 2.1
Line 128: Replace “12” with “Twelve” when used at the beginning of a sentence.
Line 140: Replace “53.03” with “53”
Line 161: Delete “the Free Access Geographical Information System”
Line 173: Here and elsewhere use “generalized linear mixed models”. Capitalization is inconsistent throughout.
Line 173: Delete “, combining linear mixed models (which incorporate random effects to deal with random variation in space and time) and generalized linear models”
Line 130: Why were species accumulation curves for pine and oak combined into forests? Again, the objective of having these two forest types is unclear. However, since you have them in your data they should be treated differently. Suggest showing the rarifaction curves fore each seperately, as in the rest of the manuscript (e.g., Fig. 2 and Fig. 3).
Line 206: A “(“ is missing here.
Fig. 2: X-axis labels need to state the units. Also, this figure is too small to read at 100%. Please make it larger (stack on top of each other?).
Line 230: Replace “22.572” with “22,572”. Use comma not decimal.
Lines 230-233: All scientific names should be in italics. This needs to be a global edit. Also, please provide the English common name for this species at first use – which is here.
Table 1. Replace “fixed factor” with “fixed effect”. Replace “random factor” with “random effect”. Also, I find this table oriented oddly. Suggest transpose columns as rows and vice versa. Finally, see my substantive comment about a table for each species with more candidate models, either in the text or as supplmental information.
Line 247: Replace “highly” with “biologically”.
Line 262: Delete “contrasting”
Line 269: Replace “mainly driven” with “responded to”
Line 274-277: Suggest deleting this sentence. How do you know this true? Speculative.
Line 288-296: Why the switch to common names solely for this paragraph? Stick with either scientific names or common names throughout, and be consistent.
Line 298: “Forests are usually expected to harbor more diverse and stable communities” Compared to what? An incomplete sentence/thought.
Line 306: Are these really keystone species? Suggest delete “keystone” here and later in the text.
Line 308-309: I don’t know what you are saying with this sentence. Please rephrase for clarity and concision.
Line 325: Please elaborate on the difference between “predation pressure” and “predation risk”. How do they differ? Alternatively, just use one term, if appropriate.
Line 335: Replace “that usual” with “than”
Line 339: Insert “us” before “to”
Line 341-343: Rather than stating that your study provides useful information for forest management in the Mediterranean, can you elaborate? Can recommendations for either management or further research be made at this juncture?
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
All my comments are included as attachment
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors use a long-term dataset to examine abundance of mammals in different habitat types, also employing LIDAR technology. This is a straightforward well-written study with an excellent handling of the large data set and really attractive and useful figures. Only very minor revision is needed.
All the abstract is well written and largely complete, ending it with a hypothesis is confusing - better wording might be "we suggest that"- furthermore it would be useful to know more about the analysis and the actual results in the abstract
Can a better more specific key word be given to predators, like the guild of predators suggested? This term won't really help people find the paper
Line 70 - does it here refer to the framework? if so write "The framework relates..."
Line 84 - can huge fires be defined like the land area they covered or the impact?
The methods are very complete and well explained - the LIDAR data are replicable; choice of GLMM with appropriate distribution; detailed explanation of the PCA
Figure 3 is very small font and hard to read
Paragraph 229 - impressive sample size! please italicise the scientific names (also in Table 1) and lines around 252
Line 288 introduces the common names of the species - these should be introduced at the same time as the Latin names and one or the other should then be chosen throughout the manuscript
Line 311 - I have seen a similar pattern in the tropics for small mammal diversity and agree with this interpretation
Paragraph 336 - this is an interesting conclusion and would also be useful as the last line of the abstract
`the authors should carefully go through the language - there are many small mistakes - I started to list them but they are numerous - for example:
Line 55 - them should be they
Line 58 - shrub rather than shrubs
line 59 - until recently
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript ID: sustainability-1524994
Habitat suitability for small mammals in Mediterranean landscapes: how and why shrubs matter
by Ignasi Torre *, Carlos Jaime-González, Mario Díaz
Review round 2
Authors took efforts to revise manuscript according comments, and from scientific point it is now much better than the first version. However, not all of my previous comments were acknowledged. Below I present a list of comments for the revised version:
- It is not reviewer’s business, if Editors agree to do reformatting of References for the authors – references are NOT formatted according Template. I published with many publishing houses, including MDPI, but was never allowed to leave part of the job to Editors. It could be a nice finding, if MDPI accepts this.
- Again, it is not business, if Editors agree to do citing of these References according Template. Now they are NOT.
- As for comment on Line 218: authors write Fig.3 not Fig. 3. Number must be separated from the dot by space. Such formatting errors are not easy to spot, thus ignoring comments could affect final quality of the paper printed, if missed also by Editors. Please give some respect to the Reviewer’s time spent on the manuscript.
- Abstract is over 200 words.
- Line 133: data about permissions must be presented in the back matter, including year and number; I appreciate permissions were given every year, so please give these data.
- Mentioning that funders had / or had no influence on the manuscript is standard, and in the case of funding must be presented. Example is given in the Template.
- Line 15 and over the rest of the text: long dash must be used when separating numbers in the range (e.g., Line 212)
- Latin names must be italicized, e.g., Lines 223–227, 233, 238, 246, 247 they are not.
- I expect Supplemental tables to be numbered as Table S1, Table S2 in the text in in the Supplement
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thanks for reminding the editorial queries. We have changed the abstract to < 200 words.
We are sorry for the problems with formatting references, we have now the formatting style of Sustainability in our reference manager. We hope the problems of formatting to be solved.
We have included the space between Fig. and the number, corrected throughout the text.
We italicized the latin names, this was yet done in the previous REV1, at least in the version presented using the journal template.
We changed from short to long dashes along the paper.
We changed the citation format of supplementary tables in the text to Table S1, S2
We included the statement: The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
We attached the detailed information on the scientific permissions for capturing small mammals between 2008 and 2018.
