The Effect of Visitors on Zoo Reptile Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study about the effect of visitors on the stress level in zoo animals certainly has its place in research on stress in captive animals. Specifically, this study evaluates reptile behavior during Covid-19 lockdown without visitors and then with visitors. I consider the study to be very beneficial for improving the welfare of reptiles in zoos and, after minor revision, I recommend it for publication:

 

Keywords: I recommend to add more words, for example stress, ethology

In-text citations - I recommend citing multiple authors as follows: [2-4], instead of [2; 3; 4],

Materials and Methods line 85 to 86 – there is mistake in time writing

Author Response

Dear Editor and reviewer

Thank you for providing comments on our manuscript. Please see below responses to the comments, which we hope are satisfactory. 

 

Keywords: I recommend to add more words, for example stress, ethology

We have now included these key words with the exception of ‘stress’ as this term is vague, and we do not actually measure it in this work.

 

In-text citations - I recommend citing multiple authors as follows: [2-4], instead of [2; 3; 4],

We have corrected these citations

 

Materials and Methods line 85 to 86 – there is mistake in time writing

We have corrected formatting based on a recent article published in JZBG.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

there are some points you need to discuss:

• tokeys are nocturnal, presence at the day can be related to temperatures and light at day and most probably not as a response or no-response to visitors. Moreover, even in their natural habitats you can find them in houses and within towns. So they are generally close to humans. 
• as you are often dealing with a small number of indivuals, the effects cann be individual and species based
• also heloderma is more nocturnal and hides at daytime. Therefore a visitor effect is most probably not present.

32: I would use the term conservation rather than preservation

50: I would prefer the term squamtes instead of reptiles. Reptiles are a non-taxonomic group which includes not close related evolutionary lineages. Therefore, squamates are the much better term to describe the species used in the study. Especially as you refer (line 58) to crocodils and monitor lizards which are not close related. Crocs are closer related to birds, varanids are squamates. From what you are writing, the reader could have the impression that both groups are close related, as you refer to them as reptiles. In fact, crocs are much closer to birds than to any lizard. The impression would be much more different if you would compare the results of a study using a bird as focus species and compare it with the study of the monitor lizard.

Table 1: you should add at least the biological factor of beeing nocturnal or diurnal for the species mentioned.

107: better write 11 squamate and 2 chelonian species instead of 13 reptile species

 

 

Author Response

Dear Editor and reviewer,

Thank you for the comments on our manuscript. We have responded to each point, below, in bold. We have also attached an updated manuscript incorporating these changes and those raised by the other reviewer.

Reviewer 2: 

tokeys are nocturnal, presence at the day can be related to temperatures and light at day and most probably not as a response or no-response to visitors. Moreover, even in their natural habitats you can find them in houses and within towns. So they are generally close to humans.  

Thank you for this point. We have already discussed the impact of nocturnality in some species in the MS, but we have now expanded on this. As we clearly explain in our MS, temperatures and light cycles were maintained at identical levels throughout the study and the only variable that changed was presence of visitors – we have therefore demonstrated that the differences in behaviour that we observed are almost certainly due to human presence. The capability of wild geckos to live near people does not make any predictions about their reactions to the proximity of humans; indeed, one reason they may be able to survive alongside people may be a sensitivity to their presence and associated tendency to stay out of sight. Regardless of this, our data, experimental design and statistical analyses show an effect of visitors on behaviour.  

 

as you are often dealing with a small number of indivuals, the effects cann be individual and species based 

Thank you for this valid point. We already discuss this limitation in the first paragraph of the discussion and acknowledge that we cannot distinguish statistically between species, individual and enclosure effects and therefore that our use of the term ‘species’ is a short-hand for ‘species/individual/enclosure combinations’. 

 

also heloderma is more nocturnal and hides at daytime. Therefore a visitor effect is most probably not present. 

For the animals in the ZSL London Zoo collection, this is not true. The animals are usually visible and sometimes active during the day (Figure 3 shows that this species is not one of the more extremely OOS species, confirming that the animals did not hide much at all during observations). We also point out that diel activity patterns are a constant across the study, so any changes in activity and OOS that were detected are linked to the presence or absence of visitors, irrespective of activity patterns.  

 

32: I would use the term conservation rather than preservation 

Thank you for this comment – we have made this replacement.

 

50: I would prefer the term squamtes instead of reptiles. Reptiles are a non-taxonomic group which includes not close related evolutionary lineages. Therefore, squamates are the much better term to describe the species used in the study. Especially as you refer (line 58) to crocodils and monitor lizards which are not close related. Crocs are closer related to birds, varanids are squamates. From what you are writing, the reader could have the impression that both groups are close related, as you refer to them as reptiles. In fact, crocs are much closer to birds than to any lizard. The impression would be much more different if you would compare the results of a study using a bird as focus species and compare it with the study of the monitor lizard. 

Thank you for this comment. We have now clarified our use of the word ‘reptile’ in the Introduction in reference to the functional similarities between the disparate groups involved. We have not used squamate as a replacement as we used two chelonian species alongside 11 squamates. We now feel that we have clearly indicated that we use the term ‘reptile’ out of convenience to reflect the broadly overlapping requirements of all ‘reptiles’’ in captivity.  

 

Table 1: you should add at least the biological factor of beeing nocturnal or diurnal for the species mentioned. 

We have now included this information in the Description column but have been careful to state that this refers to skews in activity patterns as many reptiles are not strictly nocturnal, diurnal, or crepuscular and may exhibit some activity at any point in the day.  

 

107: better write 11 squamate and 2 chelonian species instead of 13 reptile species 

We have made this replacement. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx