Occupancy and Activity Patterns of Nine-Banded Armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) in a Suburban Environment
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments
This is an interesting and reasonably well-executed study. The main drawback is it is too narrowly focused. I didn’t get a sense of some higher level management insights. Armadillo occupancy was very high, which is interesting in its own right. Forest cover was found to be highly influential on occupancy. These two findings are discussed, but I don’t think the authors have taken this far enough. It is sort of touched on at the end of the abstract. Are there lessons/insights for other species?
There are many places where the ms could be more concise because there is a tendency to repeat information that has been stated in the methods and doesn’t need repeating.
I provide some detailed comments below that could help improve the ms.
Detailed comments
Abstract
L24. Insert ‘a’ before ‘high’.
L28. Insert ‘which is’ before ‘likely’. ‘their’ instead of ‘our’
L28-32. Awkward wording. You have 2x ‘understanding’ and 1x ‘understand’ in one sentence.
Introduction
It would be better to start with some general context to help appeal to many more readers. E.g. Not all species are adversely affected by urban development. Knowledge of species that are advantaged may provide useful insights …
Methods
L97. What was the minimum spacing between sites?
L100. Was there a quiet period between triggers? Be explicit cameras had no lure.
L132. ‘survey period’ is a bit ambiguous. It might be better to use ‘time’ to indicate week varying.
Given the survey duration of Apr to Aug it might also be worth modelling min and max temperature.
L162. Change ‘when during the day each armadillo detection occurred’ to ‘the time of each armadillo detection’.
Results
L169-171. Delete ‘Between 11 April and 19 August 2021 and 2022’ and ‘Sites were surveyed up to 18 times (with 170 each survey consisting of 7 days).’ These are stated in methods. Some of the remaining text could be placed in methods and sentence ‘We detected armadillos …’ at beginning of ‘Occupancy’ section but delete the naïve occupancy part. No need to add that when you state at 84% of sites.
L175-176. Delete ‘We evaluated the detection covariates of survey period, year, cumulative weekly rainfall, and a constant detection model.’ This is in methods.
L179-80. This also repeats methods.
You should describe the variation in detection with survey week. I’d like to know whether survey method had an influence rather than treat every week as different.
Table 1 caption. ‘Covariates predicted to influence the detection’. I would change this to comparison of detection covariates. I don’t think the 2nd part of the sentence is needed. You might define the covariates even though this appears in the text.
L196. How can you state a single occupancy value when forest cover varies, as stated in next sentence? Is this from the mean of forest cover? Clarify. It might be worth showing a plot of occupancy with this covariate.
Table 2. I would delete ‘p(survey)’ in the table rows and just state in caption it was used in all occupancy models.
L203-4. Delete this sentence which is stated in methods.
Fig.1. show tick marks on axes.
Discussion
L219. Add reference for this statement. This point is repeated at L228. Remove repetition.
L258. ‘As the armadillo continues its northward expansion …’. You haven’t really made use of your primary finding about the role of forest cover. Perhaps further expansion will be reduced if areas further north have reduced cover.
I feel like you haven’t made much use of the insights from this study. Perhaps it should be framed around the conflict issue and that your study can help predict how the species’ range expansion may continue or affect many more people so that education programs may be needed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment/
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper was well-written and posits additional information on the activity patterns of nine-banded armadillo in North America. The design for this study seems appropriate as do the interpretation.
One unanswered question that comes to mind in reading this study relates to the interpretation of these data as reflective of armadillo's activities in general. Since this study is based on summer activities, all relative assessments are specific to that period of the year. There is one mention of how colder months might affect armadillo but I wonder if there will be a difference between what you've seen for their activity during the warmest months and what we can expect for the colder months? Do you assume they will stay in these same areas from summer to winter? Are there any past studies on seasonal movements in these animals that can be brought into the Discussion?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
