Using Social Media to Determine the Global Distribution of Plastics in Birds’ Nests: The Role of Riverine Habitats

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors provide valuable information on the use of plastics in nests of terrestrial species.  They found several patterns that are of interest to a broad audience.  I believe this research would provide the basis for a number of future studies.

 

Introduction

L26-27. It is arguable whether or not “Plastic pollution is to date one of the most important environmental topics in the last years.” There are many environmental topics, and many are very important. I suggest “Plastic pollution has been recognized as an important environmental topic in recent last years.” 

L30.  Need to change one parenthesis to a square bracket.

L32. Need another parenthesis.

L50. Remove “the”

L55.  Do not use “common people” as it suggests people who are “less than” others.  I suggest “the public”

L55 and on. Use “collect” instead of “recollect”

L56. Change reference where sentence currently states “…collecting plastics in [51]…”  

L74. Change “Moreover, since in social media the messages were posted by general people that normally take live in urbanized…” to “Moreover, social media posts are biased towards people in that live in urbanized…”

 

Materials and Methods

L84. Unclear what authors mean by “Nevertheless”.  Is there another word they can use?

L109. Remove “Indeed”.

L111. Missing a closing parenthesis.

L111. Unclear why experts and ornithologists would be in quotes.  Are they not really experts or ornithologists?  If you are talking about educated members of the public, I would state that.

L111-112. Unclear what “controlled” means.  Does this mean “identified using guides”?  If so, which guides—the reference is not about guides to bird nests.

I don’t have expertise in the statistical methods used, so cannot fully assess them.

 

Results

Figure 7. The figure includes some items that are not plastic.  Please note this in the figure description.

 

Discussion

L286. Correct the in-line citation.

L332. This sentence should be combined with the following paragraph.

L334.  I would not call the sample size “very low.”  Could it be described more precisely?  For example, is it a small percentage of the nests worldwide?  Does the sample size really make the data unreliable?  If so, the paper should not be published.  Rather, I think the sample size limits the conclusions that could be drawn.

L345. Remove comma after crops.

L355. Remove the word “generic”—it could be offensive and is not necessary.

L358-359.  This shouldn’t be a limitation of the study because the authors consulted with experts (if I understand correctly).

 

Conclusion

The authors should focus on their main findings, which are that plastic is really common in nests, particularly in riverine species.  There is no need to recap all of the limitations of the study.   

Author Response

Dear Editor,

we reviewed all the text, responding to any reviewer’s comment and suggestion. Here below, we reported the point-by-point responses in bold letters.

We hope that this first step is ok. We wait for further revisions.

Thank you for all.

Regards,

Luca, Massimiliano and Corrado

Replies to reviewers:

Reviewer 1

The authors provide valuable information on the use of plastics in nests of terrestrial species.  They found several patterns that are of interest to a broad audience.  I believe this research would provide the basis for a number of future studies.

Author’s response: We would like to thank the Reviewer 1 for the kind words. We modified our manuscript accordingly to your recommendations.

Introduction

L26-27. It is arguable whether or not “Plastic pollution is to date one of the most important environmental topics in the last years.” There are many environmental topics, and many are very important. I suggest “Plastic pollution has been recognized as an important environmental topic in recent last years.” 

Author’s response: Thank you for this improvement, we modified the sentence.

L30.  Need to change one parenthesis to a square bracket.

Author’s response: thanks, we did it.

L32. Need another parenthesis.

Author’s response: added.

L50. Remove “the”

Author’s response: we did it.

L55.  Do not use “common people” as it suggests people who are “less than” others.  I suggest “the public”

Author’s response: we agree, thanks! We modified it as you suggested.

L55 and on. Use “collect” instead of “recollect”

Author’s response: we changed it, thanks.

L56. Change reference where sentence currently states “…collecting plastics in [51]…”  

Author’s response: Thanks, we rephrased it.

L74. Change “Moreover, since in social media the messages were posted by general people that normally take live in urbanized…” to “Moreover, social media posts are biased towards people in that live in urbanized…”

Author’s response: Thank you for improving this sentence! We modified it accordingly.

Materials and Methods

L84. Unclear what authors mean by “Nevertheless”.  Is there another word they can use?

Author’s response: We rephrased it, thank you.

L109. Remove “Indeed”.

Author’s response: removed.

L111. Missing a closing parenthesis.

Author’s response: Thanks, we added it.

L111. Unclear why experts and ornithologists would be in quotes.  Are they not really experts or ornithologists?  If you are talking about educated members of the public, I would state that.

Author’s response: You are right, there was an error, so we deleted the quote.

L111-112. Unclear what “controlled” means.  Does this mean “identified using guides”?  If so, which guides—the reference is not about guides to bird nests.

Author’s response: yes, thanks! We modified it (now line 113).

I don’t have expertise in the statistical methods used, so cannot fully assess them.

Author’s response: We thank for the effort you put in reviewing all the paper.

Results

Figure 7. The figure includes some items that are not plastic.  Please note this in the figure description.

Author’s response: Thanks for this observation, we added a sentence in caption to better describe it.

Discussion

L286. Correct the in-line citation.

Author’s response: We corrected it in the text, thank you.

L332. This sentence should be combined with the following paragraph.

Author’s response: Thank you, we modified it.

L334.  I would not call the sample size “very low.”  Could it be described more precisely?  For example, is it a small percentage of the nests worldwide?  Does the sample size really make the data unreliable?  If so, the paper should not be published.  Rather, I think the sample size limits the conclusions that could be drawn.

Author’s response: We would like to thank you for this interesting point of view. We changed a bit the sentence explaining as our pilot study explore, for the first time, the phenomenon but further research and standardized design (using citizen-based platforms) should be carry out in the next times.

L345. Remove comma after crops.

Author’s response: Thanks, we removed it.

L355. Remove the word “generic”—it could be offensive and is not necessary.

Author’s response: Right, we agree with you. Thanks, we now removed it accordingly.

L358-359.  This shouldn’t be a limitation of the study because the authors consulted with experts (if I understand correctly).

Author’s response: We agree with you. We meant that name and various information written by common people in the post should be verified by expert regarding the taxonomic identification of species. We rephrased a bit this part, to make it more understandable.

Conclusion

The authors should focus on their main findings, which are that plastic is really common in nests, particularly in riverine species.  There is no need to recap all of the limitations of the study.   

Author’s response: We thank the Reviewer for this comment. We modified the conclusion as suggested.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you very much for your interesting work. Plastic is a big problem worldwide, and studies have highlighted that plastic can also be found in some springs in remote area.

Regarding the text I have only two small comments: line 38-39 to be rephrased -because "habitats" is used twice. Line  67-70 can be reformulated and moved to methods, or just deleted.

Overall, the manuscript is well written, and the information is very well structured. Even though the sample size is very low, the results and the discussions are well presented, and the readers could find it very interesting to replicate the experiments, or to post pictures on social media when they will find bird nests an can take pictures of them.

Just as a gentle reminder regarding the seabird nests, you have to check first the location of the pictures, because in the last years more and more seagulls nest in the cities, very far away from the sea, and also some of the materials used for the nest are made of plastic. 

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Dear Authors,

Thank you very much for your interesting work. Plastic is a big problem worldwide, and studies have highlighted that plastic can also be found in some springs in remote area.

Regarding the text I have only two small comments: line 38-39 to be rephrased -because "habitats" is used twice. Line  67-70 can be reformulated and moved to methods, or just deleted.

Author’s response: Thanks for that, we modified them accordingly.

Overall, the manuscript is well written, and the information is very well structured. Even though the sample size is very low, the results and the discussions are well presented, and the readers could find it very interesting to replicate the experiments, or to post pictures on social media when they will find bird nests an can take pictures of them.

Author’s response: We thank the Reviewer for the overall kind recommendations.

just as a gentle reminder regarding the seabird nests, you have to check first the location of the pictures, because in the last years more and more seagulls nest in the cities, very far away from the sea, and also some of the materials used for the nest are made of plastic. 

Author’s response: Thank you for this kind reminder. To date, we checked it, and no seagulls were found in the city. We will keep in mind for future studies, thanks.

Finally, we added the useful role of the anonymous reviewers in improve the first draft of the manuscript and corrected minor typos.

Thank you in advance for support.

Regards,

Luca, Massimiliano and Corrado

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf