Investigating Carnivore Guild Structure: Spatial and Temporal Relationships amongst Threatened Felids in Myanmar

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Kyaw, et al. Investigating carnivore guild structure: Spatial and temporal 2 relationships amongst threatened felids in Myanmar

Included the size of the sanctuary

Some indication of the densities of the species, especially tigers would be helpful?

Fig. 5 shows marked temporal differences between some species e.g. leopard cat-tiger, leopard cat-marbled cat, marbled cat-clouded leopard, but in the discussion it’s stated that “the main patterns of niche separation among the felid guild in northern Myanmar are spatial and not temporal” (see Discussion).

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very well designed study and presented in an excellent, in depth way. The results and dicussion are fundamental for understanding the ways sympatric felids manage to co-exist in Asian tropical forests and provide insights for potential conservation of endangered species through the management of communities, rather than single species. I especially liked the limitations part, where the authors acknolwedge and put forth potential shortcomings of their study. Overall, this study merits publication and will be a reference for those ecologists and conservation biologists. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is well written and makes an important contribution to the field. The authors identify a knowledge gap, addressed by their study, and emphasize correctly the contribution of their findings to the theoretical advancement of the field. The way the article is written is suitable for an international audience. All these arguments plead for its publication. However, there are some minor shortcomings related to writing up the manuscript, presented in detail.

Lines 32-40: for better understanding the study in general and hypotheses in particular, it would help introducing the different types of niches: temporal, spatial, habitat etc., and then develop the idea of partial overlaps, and then focusing, perhaps with some example, on the core idea of the study, i.e. spatial niches overlap, but the temporal ones not etc., so that potentially conflicting interactions are minimized. This should be done before particularizing the idea for the investigated species (line 60).

Methods: it is not clear how the authors reached from point data (camera trap stations) to areal data. It would help presenting in more detail, in a couple of sentences, the approach mentioned in lines 197-198. Pointing to a reference is not sufficient; an article must read alone, without having to read other articles in order to understand it. Also, this portion of the text contains references that cannot be easily identified: Methods S1 and Figure S1 (line 194), Method S1 (line 211); in these cases, the authors should mention that they point out to the Supplementary materials, as they do in lines 229-230. Obviously, the same should be done wherever Supplementary materials are referred in the text.

Although the Author Guidelines require a Conclusion sections, the authors fail to include it. The discussions are well done, and they mention what the implications of this study for conservation and theoretical advancement of the field are, and also what does the verification of hypotheses mean. These ideas should be presented in a short form in the conclusions.

Please revise the text for English, and eliminate flagrant subject-verb disagreement, like the one in lines 194-195: "Methods S1 and Figure S1 documents", and check out the manuscript for similar ones, or for other mistakes.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx