Disentangling the Effects of Climate and Land Uses on Small Mammals in Agroecosystems of NE Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

I have read your manuscript „Partialling out the influence of climate and land uses on the small mammal diversity in agroecosystems of NE Spain” with enthusiasm, and I find it of great interest. The study was conducted at the confluence of the Mediterranean and Eurosiberian regions, disentangling the effects of climatic and land use variables on the structure and diversity of small mammal communities, delineating the spatial distribution of species in this transitional areas. Furthermore, the results reiterate that analysis of barn owl pellets are an important and accurate source of information, which, at the landscape scale, cannot be easily obtained from other more traditional sampling methods such as live trapping.

The manuscript is generally well written and easy to read, with sound analyses, suggestive illustrations and pertinent discussions. Therefore, I recommend the manuscript for publication, but I have some concerns that should be addressed beforehand.

I do not fully agree with the title. Firstly, partialling out means removing the effect of a variable (covariate). You did, indeed, partial out the influence of climate and land uses on small mammals in some of your analyses, but the final goal was to tell apart their effects. So, I suggest something like „Disentangeling the effects of climate and land uses on...” or „Unique and shared effects of climate and land uses on...”. Secondly, you did not look only at species diversity, but also at species composition and the species responses to environment. Therefore, I think the title should reflect this. You could leave just „...on small mammals in...”.

In the introduction, in lines 89-92 – you say that the well-known decline the barn owl has experienced in the last decades in Catalonia is partly due to competition for nesting places with the Tawny owl. I find it stange, since the two species have different habitat requirements, the tawny owl being a forest species, at least in our area. Maybe this requires a short explanation.

You classify the species found in the study in four categories, but these are rather a mix of biogeographical and habitat categories. Mediterranean and Eurosiberian refer to the species’ ranges, while generalist and synanthropic refer to habitat preference. If you want to stick to these, you should justify your choice and give details.

In the methods section I do not think you need to present the steps performed for disentangeling the effects of climate and land use in such detail - Canoco 5 does this in one analysis – the Variation partitioning (between two groups or among three groups of variables), so does the function varpart in package vegan in R (this allows partitioning among up to four matrices of explanatory variables). Instead you may give other details that represent your choices, for instance the number of Monte Carlo permutations used in testing the axes and the variables, or report some of the intermediary results, such as the length of the gradient, which you mention in the discussions.

I do not think the best option to illustrate the response of species to the environment is considering the constrained axes, as in Figure 5. Firstly, the graph is redundant with Figure 4, and secondly it is not very informative or easy to interpret as the ordination axes are abstract; not real factors, but combinations of these. I would suggest plotting (and testing) the response curves (and not necessarily the linear ones, but the best fiiting, if they are not linear) of the dominant species (or even for others, if significant) to the four factors with significant effect on the species composition, and report the significance of the response.

Figure 7 is a hard-to-grasp image, at least at first glance, which conveys two messages. I suggest splitting it into two graphs, and presents the models behind the dotted lines, and their significance. You state that species diversity was unrelated to landscape composition, but the graph is not enough for defending this statement. You should provide a model and a statistical significance (or rather lack of it). And you should also discuss the meaning of the hump-shaped curves describing the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and landscape composition.

In the discussion section, sometimes it is difficult to tell apart own results from those in the literature. Try to use different tenses – usually past is used for own results, while present is used for already established facts – information from the literature.

Concerning the species’ scientific names, in the abstract they should be written in full. The same goes also in the main text for the first mentioning of the species, as well as when the latin name starts the sentence. When abbreviating the scientific name, leave space between the . after the genus initial and the species name. In Figure 3 species names should be in small caps, not capital letters. And give the scientific name of the tawny owl as well.

Other minor comments and corrections are listed below.

Throughout the text there are some parantheses that are opened but not closed.

Be consistent with the reference to figures. You use altrnatively Fig., Figure and figure. Stick to one, after checking the journal’s guidelines. Besides, use a, b, c, d to refer to figures with multiple graphs.

Line 11 – “at” instead of “in”

Line 16 – ”of” instead of  “or”

Lines 36-43 - The sentence is too long. Change ; to . in line 40.

Line 85 – delete “a”

Line 95 – I think “climate” is more appropriate here than “climatology”.

Line 96 – “m a.s.l.”

Line 143 – “We used Redundancy analysis (RDA) with constrained ordination” – RDA is a constrained ordination method, you can not use it with constrained ordination

Lines 158-159 – “Generalized Linear Models (GLM) with Identity as the link function“ – these are actually Linear models (with gaussian distribution).

Line 176 – delete “different”

Line 179 – delete “most than” – actually is “more than”, but is not necessary.

Line 180 – “and the eight remaining species represented less than 7% of the total” – this is redundant

Line 181 - delete “a”

Lines 181-182 – “Regarding prey species requirements” – this is not necessary and not really correct, as “Mediterranean” is more a biogeographical category than a species requirement category.

Line 198 and elsewhere - p values should be reported with three decimals

Line 200, 208 – delete “the” before percentages

Line 214-218 – This could be better represented by a Venn diagram than in a paragraph.

Line 224 – delete “both”

Line 225 – “are for” instead of “for”

Line 227 – “by all predictors of that group” instead of “for the whole predictors”

Line 290 – “with these limitations” instead of “the limitations”

Line 292 – “to” instead of “than”

Line 300 – delete “to”

Line 303 – “compared to” instead of  “–in front of”

Line 311 – “these” instead of “both”

Lines 333-334 – “two other species showed mixed responses (ei-333 ther climate and land uses such as A.flavicollis and S.minutus). “ – this is not clear please rephrase

Line 336 – “showed” instead of  “sowed”

Line 336 - what do you mean by ”mixed responses”?

Line 344 – “to” instead of “with”

Lines 351-352 – name the two species

Line 352 – “with” instead of “to”

Line 361 – “competition” instead of “competence”?

Line 363 – delete “which matches”

Line 365 – delete “with”

Line 366 – “with both climatic and land use variables”

Line 370 – “in S. minutus”

Line 374 – “this species”

Line 375 – “it can be found even” instead of “even can be found”

Line 386 – “owing to the retreat”

Line 387-388 – “Despite none of the small mammal species identified in this study having any conservation concern,”

Lines 395-396 – “as a measure of relative abundances” or “reflecting relative abundances” instead of “as relative abundances”.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English language is overall fine. There are some minor corrections needed, some of them are mentioned in the review report.

Author Response

Dear Authors,

I have read your manuscript „Partialling out the influence of climate and land uses on the small mammal diversity in agroecosystems of NE Spain” with enthusiasm, and I find it of great interest. The study was conducted at the confluence of the Mediterranean and Eurosiberian regions, disentangling the effects of climatic and land use variables on the structure and diversity of small mammal communities, delineating the spatial distribution of species in this transitional areas. Furthermore, the results reiterate that analysis of barn owl pellets are an important and accurate source of information, which, at the landscape scale, cannot be easily obtained from other more traditional sampling methods such as live trapping.

The manuscript is generally well written and easy to read, with sound analyses, suggestive illustrations and pertinent discussions. Therefore, I recommend the manuscript for publication, but I have some concerns that should be addressed beforehand.

Authors: Thanks for the positive comments!!!

I do not fully agree with the title. Firstly, partialling out means removing the effect of a variable (covariate). You did, indeed, partial out the influence of climate and land uses on small mammals in some of your analyses, but the final goal was to tell apart their effects. So, I suggest something like „Disentangeling the effects of climate and land uses on...” or „Unique and shared effects of climate and land uses on...”. Secondly, you did not look only at species diversity, but also at species composition and the species responses to environment. Therefore, I think the title should reflect this. You could leave just „...on small mammals in...”.

Authors: We agree with the reviewer, and we changed the title as suggested:  Disentangeling the effects of climate and land uses on small mammals in agroecosystems of NE Spain

In the introduction, in lines 89-92 – you say that the well-known decline the barn owl has experienced in the last decades in Catalonia is partly due to competition for nesting places with the Tawny owl. I find it stange, since the two species have different habitat requirements, the tawny owl being a forest species, at least in our area. Maybe this requires a short explanation.

Authors: We have observed that some nesting places that were traditionally occupied by barn owls have been progressively abandoned or occupied by tawny owls. This is because the areas have been submitted to a natural process of afforestation being more favourable for tawny owls. We added some more detailed information about that.

You classify the species found in the study in four categories, but these are rather a mix of biogeographical and habitat categories. Mediterranean and Eurosiberian refer to the species’ ranges, while generalist and synanthropic refer to habitat preference. If you want to stick to these, you should justify your choice and give details.

Authors: This classification arises from chorotypes described by Sans-Fuentes and Ventura (2000) in the study area, and it was acknowledged along the discussion.

In the methods section I do not think you need to present the steps performed for disentangeling the effects of climate and land use in such detail - Canoco 5 does this in one analysis – the Variation partitioning (between two groups or among three groups of variables), so does the function varpart in package vegan in R (this allows partitioning among up to four matrices of explanatory variables).

Authors: Thanks for the suggestion, but we used the version 4.5 of Canoco, so this “one step” procedure was unavailable for us. However, we reduced the explanation of these well-known procedures. Thanks for the R package, we will explore it in further investigations.

Instead you may give other details that represent your choices, for instance the number of Monte Carlo permutations used in testing the axes and the variables, or report some of the intermediary results, such as the length of the gradient, which you mention in the discussions.

Authors: We used the default option (499 permutations) and included the length of the gradients to justify linear-RDA analyses.

I do not think the best option to illustrate the response of species to the environment is considering the constrained axes, as in Figure 5. Firstly, the graph is redundant with Figure 4, and secondly it is not very informative or easy to interpret as the ordination axes are abstract; not real factors, but combinations of these. I would suggest plotting (and testing) the response curves (and not necessarily the linear ones, but the best fiiting, if they are not linear) of the dominant species (or even for others, if significant) to the four factors with significant effect on the species composition, and report the significance of the response.

Authors: Thanks for the suggestions, we omitted this figure and changed the contents by plotting simultaneous species responses to both axes of both environmental matrices (new figure 5). Indeed, interpretation of responses on single axes can be difficult without bearing in mind that responses are in a two-dimensional space, so we preferred plotting responses on both axes at the same time. However, we also tested the possibility of non-linear associations and included a table (nº 1) with the best fitting models (linear vs. quadratic) and their statistical significance.

Figure 7 is a hard-to-grasp image, at least at first glance, which conveys two messages. I suggest splitting it into two graphs, and presents the models behind the dotted lines, and their significance. You state that species diversity was unrelated to landscape composition, but the graph is not enough for defending this statement. You should provide a model and a statistical significance (or rather lack of it). And you should also discuss the meaning of the hump-shaped curves describing the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and landscape composition.

Authors: we decided to keep only the hump-shaped patterns relating landscape heterogeneity and landscape composition in the figure 7, and the relationship of species richness with heterogeneity was omitted and only cited in the text.

In the discussion section, sometimes it is difficult to tell apart own results from those in the literature. Try to use different tenses – usually past is used for own results, while present is used for already established facts – information from the literature.

Authors: We followed your suggestion to improve the discussion.

Concerning the species’ scientific names, in the abstract they should be written in full. The same goes also in the main text for the first mentioning of the species, as well as when the latin name starts the sentence. When abbreviating the scientific name, leave space between the . after the genus initial and the species name.

Authors: done

In Figure 3 species names should be in small caps, not capital letters. And give the scientific name of the tawny owl as well.Other minor comments and corrections are listed below.

Authors: done

Throughout the text there are some parantheses that are opened but not closed.

Authors: Thanks, we have checked it out…

Be consistent with the reference to figures. You use altrnatively Fig., Figure and figure. Stick to one, after checking the journal’s guidelines. Besides, use a, b, c, d to refer to figures with multiple graphs.

Authors: Thanks, we have checked it out…

 

Line 11 – “at” instead of “in”

Authors: done

Line 16 – ”of” instead of  “or”

Authors: done

Lines 36-43 - The sentence is too long. Change ; to . in line 40.

Authors: done

Line 85 – delete “a”

Authors: done

Line 95 – I think “climate” is more appropriate here than “climatology”.

Authors: done

Line 96 – “m a.s.l.”

Authors: done

Line 143 – “We used Redundancy analysis (RDA) with constrained ordination” – RDA is a constrained ordination method, you can not use it with constrained ordination

Authors: done

Lines 158-159 – “Generalized Linear Models (GLM) with Identity as the link function“ – these are actually Linear models (with gaussian distribution).

Authors: changed, but this is exactly the name of the test that Canoco performs, a GLZ with identity function and normal distribution.

Line 176 – delete “different”

Authors: done

Line 179 – delete “most than” – actually is “more than”, but is not necessary.

Authors: done

Line 180 – “and the eight remaining species represented less than 7% of the total” – this is redundant

Authors: we deleted this part

Line 181 - delete “a”

Authors: done

Lines 181-182 – “Regarding prey species requirements” – this is not necessary and not really correct, as “Mediterranean” is more a biogeographical category than a species requirement category.

Authors: done

Line 198 and elsewhere - p values should be reported with three decimals

Authors: done

Line 200, 208 – delete “the” before percentages

Authors: done

Line 214-218 – This could be better represented by a Venn diagram than in a paragraph

Authors: we used another approach to show variance partitioning in the new figure 4 because the Venn diagram does not keep actual proportions of explained variance

Line 224 – delete “both”

Authors: done

Line 225 – “are for” instead of “for”

Authors: done

Line 227 – “by all predictors of that group” instead of “for the whole predictors”

Authors: done

Line 290 – “with these limitations” instead of “the limitations”

Authors: done

Line 292 – “to” instead of “than”

Authors: done

Line 300 – delete “to”

Authors: done

Line 303 – “compared to” instead of  “–in front of”

Authors: done

Line 311 – “these” instead of “both”

Authors: done

Lines 333-334 – “two other species showed mixed responses (ei-333 ther climate and land uses such as A.flavicollis and S.minutus). “ – this is not clear please rephrase

Authors: this sentence was automatically broken by the Diversity template

Line 336 – “showed” instead of  “sowed”

Authors: done

Line 336 - what do you mean by ”mixed responses”?

Authors: We are talking about the two main drivers, climate or land use, and mixed means both, but is better to specify that they showed response to both drivers

Line 344 – “to” instead of “with”

Authors: done

Lines 351-352 – name the two species

Authors: done

Line 352 – “with” instead of “to”

Authors: done

Line 361 – “competition” instead of “competence”?

Authors: done

Line 363 – delete “which matches”

Authors: done

Line 365 – delete “with”

Authors: done

Line 366 – “with both climatic and land use variables”

Authors: done

Line 370 – “in S. minutus”

Authors: done

Line 374 – “this species”

Authors: done

Line 375 – “it can be found even” instead of “even can be found”

Authors: done

Line 386 – “owing to the retreat”

Authors: done

Line 387-388 – “Despite none of the small mammal species identified in this study having any conservation concern,”

Authors: done

Lines 395-396 – “as a measure of relative abundances” or “reflecting relative abundances” instead of “as relative abundances”.

Authors: done

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors examined the influence of climate and land use on the small mammal diversity in agroecosystems of NE Spain. The manuscript contains original and novel that yielded important findings, useful for the management of small mammal communities and provided insights for further research needs.

 The manuscript text conveys the authors’ thoughts clearly and unambiguously. The theory underlying the research has been succinctly given. All arguments and conclusions have been supported by relevant references. Research design, data collection, handling, and analysis have been carried out using proper methods. The data has been appropriately interpreted.

 

Overall, the research design, analysis, and discussion have been very well carried out, clearly transferring the underlying messages. The manuscript presented novel research that can be considered a significant contribution to the field of mammal ecology.

Comments

Lines 15-16: Give full genus name at first mention.

Lines 33-34; Correct to “mammal species richness is concentrated in the north [5], and since this area is colder”.

Line 63: will face the bigger…

Line 92: Give the scientific name for the tawny owl.

 

Figure 1: A scale is missing from the main map.

Author Response

The authors examined the influence of climate and land use on the small mammal diversity in agroecosystems of NE Spain. The manuscript contains original and novel that yielded important findings, useful for the management of small mammal communities and provided insights for further research needs.

The manuscript text conveys the authors’ thoughts clearly and unambiguously. The theory underlying the research has been succinctly given. All arguments and conclusions have been supported by relevant references. Research design, data collection, handling, and analysis have been carried out using proper methods. The data has been appropriately interpreted.

Overall, the research design, analysis, and discussion have been very well carried out, clearly transferring the underlying messages. The manuscript presented novel research that can be considered a significant contribution to the field of mammal ecology.

Authors: Thanks for the positive comments!!!

Comments

Lines 15-16: Give full genus name at first mention.

Authors: done

Lines 33-34; Correct to “mammal species richness is concentrated in the north [5], and since this area is colder”.

Authors: done

Line 63: will face the bigger…

Authors: done

Line 92: Give the scientific name for the tawny owl.

Authors: done

Figure 1: A scale is missing from the main map.

Authors: we think that scale of the large map can be inferred from the small one below

 

 

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, 

I have read the revised version of your manuscript, now titled „Disentangling the effects of climate and land uses on the small mammals in agroecosystems of NE Spain” and found it much improved, with all the major issues resolved. I have now only small corrections and minor observations, in the attached PDF.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English language is fine, with small corrections still needed, marked in the attached PDF.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we are indebted to your careful review, noting several mistakes that were not corrected during the REV1. My apologies, this was my fault since I uploaded an incomplete version of the REV1. We have now improved this version by adding additional figures to Figure 5 and the correct Table 1 analyzing the simultaneous influences of both axes in species responses. 

Thank you very much