Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A Word version of your ms is attached. I have to apologize for some shortcomings in the conversion. The text is divided into blocks in the conversion process and this required me to widen the margins of blocks within which text was added, or move the whole block – thus the staggered rearrangement. Another feature of the conversion was the deletion of all double “t”s within words – I went through the ms and added these wherever I found them dropped, so that you wouldn’t think that you had somehow done this. Tables tended to have extra blank lines inserted as well. Word itself appears to have dispensed with the left-marginal lines indicating any change in the text, and as many of these in this ms are the insertion of commas, you will have to look closely. Again, my apologies for this, but I find trying to edit Adobe documents extremely frustrating.

This was an interesting and worthwhile study, and I commend you for the amount of time and effort you’ve put into it. Wood turtles appear to be in trouble wherever they are found, and studies such as yours are vital in supporting conservation efforts. It is particularly worthwhile in that it establishes a long baseline for these populations.

There are a number of marginal comments on the attached ms; most of these concern relatively minor issues and are self-explanatory. I expand on a couple below.

You give little information on the formal legal status of this species, either in Iowa or globally – you refer to it as “endangered” by IUCN criteria, but this is a well-defined status and should have a citation. It is also listed under CITES Schedule II and this should be mentioned. A brief run-through of its legal status in the jurisdictions within which it is found is also indicated – no need to go into much detail but it underlines the precarity of the Wood Turtle’s situation across its range. The most recent COSEWIC report covers legal status in Canada – citation below.

The legends on Fig. 1 very hard to read. I realize that this may be something that the journal’s copy editor should be dealing with and will bring it to their attention, but possibly you could remove the legends from each individual picture and insert one large legend for them all.

I’ve gone through the text and made some small alterations, mostly inserting commas to break up sentences, but also some re-wording that I thought made the text flow more smoothly. The quality of the writing was high, so please consider these as suggestions.

I hope that this review is helpful. As I said, I think that this is a valuable addition to our knowledge of Wood turtles and look forward to seeing it published.

 

COSEWIC. 2018. COSEWIC assessment and status report on the Wood Turtle Glyptemys insculpta in Canada. Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Ottawa. xiii + 51 pp. (http://www.registrelep-sararegistry.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=en&n=24F7211B-1).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your careful and helpful review of our manuscript. We fully adopted nearly all of this reviewer's suggestions, and we appreciate the positive comments and the improvements that this reviewer provided.

Comments M1-M4: fully addressed and adopted with additional text and citations added. The relevant text now reads:  The Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta; LeConte, 1830) is a species of conservation concern across their range. In Iowa, they are exceedingly rare and have been state-listed as endangered since 1997 [1]. They are considered globally endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and are listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) schedule II [2,3]. 

Comment M5: comment fully adopted, review citation added

Comment M6: comment fully adopted, relevant text now reads:  We conducted an over 10-yr radio telemetry study in Iowa on seven juvenile Wood turtles for 32–182 weeks at three sites in three counties, and a 6-week study on six head-started hatchlings at a single site, to determine home range sizes for each age class, and to provide comparisons between these groups and with similar studies on adult Wood Turtles. 

Comment M7: comment fully adopted, relevant text now reads:  The Wood Turtle ranges from the Canadian Maritimes south to eastern West Virginia and northern Virginia and west through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, with an isolated population in northeastern Iowa [27,28]. 

Other text suggestions fully adopted: its habitat preferences... (line 106, now 108), utilize features such as... (line 116, now 108), are mosaics... (line 166, now 168)

Comment M8: fully adopted, addressed of companies added. Relevant text now reads:  Marathon digital caliper (model 030300; ± 0.1 mm; MSI-Viking, Duncan, South Carolina, USA). Body mass (± 0.1 g) was determined with a Libror digital scale (model EB-4300 DW; 4300.00 g; Shimadzu, Columbia, Maryland, USA).

Comment M9: yes, age does obscure growth annuli and in individuals over 35 years of age the annuli are fully worn away. That's why we estimate age in 5-year intervals between ages 20-35, then list >35 for any individuals whose growth annuli are not perceptible (and often the bone sutures show through the epidermal scutes as they are worn down). This is standard practice for this species, and to our knowledge, nearly all researchers follow this protocol.

Line 207 (now 210): "transmitter" added, thank you for spotting this omission

Comment M10: fully adopted; "with a" text inserted and model number now added (convex model A43887, Forestry Suppliers, Inc.; Jackson, Mississippi, USA).

Lines 259, 261 (now 262, 264): "distant" replaced with "widely separated" (MS Word grammar tool flagged the hyphen so we deleted it).

Comment M11: yes, and we clarified this statement. It now reads: One hatchling was killed by a predator approximately one week after release, and although we replaced the transmitter on another hatchling from the same clutch, both were dropped from the analysis because we had fewer than 20 locations for each.  [Although we note that the term "censored" is standard terminology in home range and survivorship analyses.]

Line 313: missing "ha" abbreviations for hectares were added on this line and the following few lines.

Comment M12: we rearranged and enlarged the images so that the figure legends were easier to read.

Line 345 (now 348): we left the sentence as is because sentences should not begin with a number and writing out "Two hundred and five" seems overly cumbersome to the reader. If the editors recommend starting the sentence with "205" that is certainly fine with the authors to adopt this suggestion.

Line 351 (now 354): "the" inserted, so the text now reads: "and within 150 m of the release site." Thank you for catching this omission.

Comment M13 and M15 (line 379, now 381): addressed, we deleted the adjective, "small" in both instances (although as Iowa streams go, 20-30 m width is small, many others are 50-150 m wide, including those inhabited by wood turtles-- see Tamplin et al. 2024 for a discussion of this).

Tamplin, J.; Haugen, J.; Anderson, T.; Berg, S.; Burtch, J.; Hayes, A.; Hobbs, G. Water depth selection by Iowa Wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) during seasonal activity periods. Northeast. Natural. 2024, 31(Special Issue 12: Biology and Conservation of Emydine Turtles), G1–G17.

Comment M14: figure legend amended to clarify that the numbers are individual observations. Figure legend now reads:  Percentages (y-axis) and individual observations (column numbers) of aquatic and terrestrial habitat usage of 13 Iowa wood turtles...

Line 492 (now 495): "themselves" inserted into text.

Line 532 (now 535): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "spatial ecology studies on this youngest age class for this species."

Line 544 (now 535): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "Juvenile MCPs were similar to values determined by Otten et al. [5] which used a subset of these same individuals..."

Line 581 (now 584): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "...the values for adults of either sex that have been reported in the literature." 

Line 585 (now 589): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "(males were omitted from the analysis)"

Comment M16: revision addressed, the first value is for females, the second is for males. The text now reads: "The average mean LHR from seven studies is 657 m (range = 435–866 m) for adult females and 1,028 m (range = 481–1,531 m) for adult males."

Line 594 (now 597): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "Juvenile SHR values our study were 100–300 m smaller than those of juveniles,..."

Line 616 (now 619): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "Our values for juveniles were similar to those of adults,..."

Line 634 (now 637): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "Juvenile Wood Turtles had larger home ranges than hatchlings, but these were still smaller than the home range sizes of adults in Iowa,..."

Line 638 (now 641): revision fully adopted, text now reads: "Because Wood Turtles are an “edge species” that often occupy transitions between habitats,..."

Line 644 (now 647): comma added.

Line 651 (now 654): suggestion fully adopted, text now reads: "This may be particularly important for species in which the ecological patterns of young age classes differ from those of adult turtles."

Line 666 (now 669): The capitalized.

Comment M17: corrected, journal article title now appears in sentence case. Thank you.

Line 792: corrected, extra comma removed. We appreciate the attention to detail, not all reviewers pay attention to this level of detail in the references.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for allowing me to review this work.
The manuscript is very well organized, presented, and written, and it presents important information on habitat use and home range in hatchlings and juveniles of a very peculiar population of the Glyptemys insculpa turtle.
It is a high-quality work, and I have no comments, so I consider the work ready for publication.                

Author Response

Thank you for your very positive review, we appreciate it.  The other reviewers offered numerous suggestions, which we largely adopted, and a revised version of the manuscript will be available for viewing if you'd like to read the revised version.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,
The manuscript on habitat usage of wood turtles investigates very important issues in the context of its conservation and ecology. Introduction and discussion are written well. However, there are some things that need to be corrected so that the manuscript can be fully understood.

First of all, delete "home range" from keywords since this is already mentioned in the title of the manuscript.

In the introduction, when mentioning the latin name of the species, it would be good to write the full name of the species including its author and the year of description

Lines 124-126  there is some mistake in female/male (females cannot use habitat more frequently than females)

section 2.3. it is not very clear if you had to catch turtles each time you recorded their location and identification number? As well, I missed the information on how often you went to the field to search for turtles? How many days were you in the field in total (or per year)? Please add more details to this section.

figure 1. What do the dots represent? Please include this in the figure legend.

Figures 2., 3 and 4 are redundant as all the data presented in these figures are already mentioned in the text.

Figure 5 these data should be presented by box-plots and not these bars as no relevant data is visible in this way. 

Author Response

Thank your for your careful review. We appreciate the time that you put into reviewing the manuscript and value your comments and contributions. We adopted many of your suggestions and added some clarifying statements. We enlarged and clarified Figure 1 and it's legend based on your comments and those of the other reviewers.  However, we think (as did the other reviewers) that Figures 2-5 are valuable and well represent the data visually, so we have largely left those as is.

Comment 1: First of all, delete "home range" from keywords since this is already mentioned in the title of the manuscript.

Response: Done, home range was deleted from the keywords.

Comment 2: In the introduction, when mentioning the latin name of the species, it would be good to write the full name of the species including its author and the year of description

Response: Done, LeConte 1830 was added to the first usage of Glyptemys insculpta.

Comment 3: Lines 124-126  there is some mistake in female/male (females cannot use habitat more frequently than females)

Response: Done, the second usage of females was corrected to males. The line now reads: "Female Wood Turtles have smaller home ranges, shorter linear ranges, and shorter stream ranges than males..."

Comment 4: section 2.3. it is not very clear if you had to catch turtles each time you recorded their location and identification number? As well, I missed the information on how often you went to the field to search for turtles? How many days were you in the field in total (or per year)? Please add more details to this section.

Response: We located turtles each time using radio telemetry. When on land we handled the turtles to record body temperature and body mass, but we did not include these details in the paper since they were not relevant to the study (they will be reported in a future paper). Lines 138-145 detail the time span that we radio-tracked turtles: 

Eight Wood Turtles were monitored at BHC: six hatchlings for six weeks from 17 September–29 October 2015, and two juveniles from 8 May 2014–26 May 2016 (107 weeks) and 7 May 2015–8 July 2016 (61 weeks)]. Four juveniles were monitored in BC from 7 May 2014–22 December 2014 (32 weeks), 17 June 2014–14 December 2017 (182 weeks), 19 August 2014–2 June 2015 (41 weeks), and 23 June 2015–14 December 2017 (129 weeks), respectively. A single 10–11-yr old juvenile turtle was monitored for 78 weeks at the MC site from 23 May 2023–25 November 2024.

For hatchlings, lines 178-179 state: "We tracked six hatchling wood turtles at BHC three to four times per week for six weeks until transmitter failure during the fall of 2015." We did insert a clarification statement on lines 179-180: "Each hatchling was sampled once per field site visit." (A total of 21-22 locations for each are described in the results section).

For juveniles, lines 199-206 state: "We tracked two juvenile wood turtles (8- and 9 yrs-old) at the same BHC site during 2014–2015, and 4 juvenile turtles (8–14 yrs-old) from BC during 2014–2017, and one 10–11-yr-old juvenile from MC during 2023–2024." 

We did clarify on lines 205 - 207 that biweekly indicates tracking twice a week and bimonthly means tracking twice a month. The total sample size is presented in numerous places in the results section and is reflective of the number of field days. We sampled each turtle once during each field site visit. To clarify, the text now reads:

"Cumulatively, juvenile turtles were tracked approximately biweekly (twice a week during active period months) to bimonthly (twice a month during winter dormancy) with radio telemetry from May 2014 through November 2024. Juvenile turtles were sampled once per field site visit."

Comment 5: figure 1. What do the dots represent? Please include this in the figure legend.

Response: The symbols (color coordinated dots, squares, triangles) represent individual turtle location points used to create the home range areas. This is standard protocol for turtle home range papers. We added a short statement to the figure legend for clarification. The figure legend now contains the statement:  "Individual turtle location points are indicated by symbols corresponding to each MCP metric." The key for each figure indicates which symbol represents which MCP metric (50%, 95%, 100%). Based on another reviewers comment, we also enlarged the images so that the keys are easier to read.

Comment 6: Figures 2., 3 and 4 are redundant as all the data presented in these figures are already mentioned in the text.

Response: We think that the figures represent the data visually and are essential to the reader's understanding and quick perception of the results. We don't directly state each of values presented in the figures in the text, but instead offer a short summary in the text in order to properly cite the figure. The other 3 reviewers found the figures valuable, although as mentioned above we did enlarge Figure 1 to make it more legible.

Comment 7: Figure 5 these data should be presented by box-plots and not these bars as no relevant data is visible in this way. 

Response: we don't fully understand this comment. This is a histogram that depicts mean and standard error of the distance from water for each of the three treatment and analytical groups (all hatchlings, all juvenile observations, fall period juvenile observations for better comparison with the hatchling sample period, plus those values generated from excluding aquatic observations).  We also list Standard Deviation, minimum and maximum values (that are not presented on the graph) in the text. This type of graph is commonly used for these types of summary data and is standard procedure. Box plots of individual turtle responses would not be feasible for these data. See Tamplin et al. 2024 for an example this graph type being utilized to present these kinds of data.

Tamplin, J.; Haugen, J.; Anderson, T.; Berg, S.; Burtch, J.; Hayes, A.; Hobbs, G. Water depth selection by Iowa Wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) during seasonal activity periods. Northeast. Natural. 2024, 31(Special Issue 12: Biology and Conservation of Emydine Turtles), G1–G17.

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript reports on a field study on the home range and habitat use of hatchling and juvenile wood turtles, including head-started individuals. Such information is relatively rare in turtles and so this is a potentially valuable study. I have a few suggestions to improve the manuscript which are provided in the general order they appear in the manuscript.

 

Line 20: Usually this is referred to as “egg predation” not “embryo predation”

Line 23: Here you say “none” but in line 57 you say “one” study exists from Iowa.

Lines 24-25 and elsewhere: Is the use of head-started hatchlings possibly affected your results? i.e., do they sufficiently represent natural hatchlings?

Line 47: change “that lies at” to “on”

Line 53: You give a percent so it would be better to say “low percentage”

Line 54: Should be past tense – so “were” not “are”

Lines 68-85: Is this really needed in the Introduction?

Lines 145-146: I’m not sure north should be capitalized.

Lines 162-166: Provide the scientific names for these species.

Lines 177-178: Any concerns about generalizability since these are all from the same clutch?

Line 202: Do biweekly and bimonthly mean 2x per week/month or every two weeks/months?

Lines 207-208: Were they internal or external antennae for the transmitters?

Line 244 (see also lines 269-272): I’m not sure I understand why this is a repeated measures ANOVA. What was the repeated measure?

Lines 251-252: Please provide the citation for the R packages.

Lines 289, 297, 302: Is this total or per hatchling? What was the mean number per hatchling? What was the range?

Lines 306-319: Don’t repeat information in text and tables.

Line 307: Extraneous period towards the end of the line.

Lines 348-355, 375-381: How compare to available?

Lines 383-391: Again, don’t repeat information in text and tables.

Lines 409-426: Why report MS and SS? They are not typically provided and are not really neded. Also it should just be F, not F-value. The F should also have two degrees of freedom reported.

Table 2: Did you correct p-values for repeated analyses?

Line 448 and throughout: Don’t focus so much on the statistical analyses – focus on the results and patterns.

Line 459: The chi-squared tests were not significantly different – the hatchlings and juveniles differed. The results need to be rewritten to be more result focused not analysis focused.

Author Response

Thank you for your careful and thoughtful review of the manuscript. We appreciate your time and the attention to detail that you provided. Your comments and suggestions have greatly improved the manuscript, and we have fully adopted most of them.

Comment 1: Line 20: Usually this is referred to as “egg predation” not “embryo predation”

Response: revision fully adopted, we changed the text from “embryo predation” to “egg predation.” 

Comment 2: Line 23: Here you say “none” but in line 57 you say “one” study exists from Iowa.

Response: revision fully adopted, we changed the text to read: "Home range and habitat usage studies of hatchling and juvenile Wood Turtles are limited to a few studies, and only one study of juveniles exists from the state of Iowa."

Comment 2: Lines 24-25 and elsewhere: Is the use of head-started hatchlings possibly affected your results? i.e., do they sufficiently represent natural hatchlings?

Response: that's a good point, but it's the best that we can do given the circumstances.  We have only ever found a single wild hatchling wood turtle in over 22 years of field work in Iowa (for comparison, I found several hatchlings in less than 2 weeks of field work in another state). We have great difficulty even finding wood turtle nests here given that we often are radio tracking a few dozen turtles, but often only have 3-5 gravid females in any one year, and those are spread out over 6 counties. Locating nests before the raccoons get them is difficult and for the times that we do, we often cage them at the site or remove them and incubate them in the lab for head-starting and the request of the state Department of Natural Resources.  Even those circumstances are limited-- we've only managed to release 52 head-started wood turtles in the past 2 decades (including those described in this study). For comparison, we've released over 1500 head-started turtles of a few other aquatic and semi-aquatic species in that same time period. We are at the extreme edge of this species' range, and there just aren't many here (20 years ago the population was dwindling but you could still find some on the right day). Recently, as part of our grant funding objectives, we spent 972 search hours over the course of 4  years looking for new wood turtles to radio track. That effort resulted in only 11 turtles, only 2 of which were (older) juveniles. This past summer we spent 177 hours searching a site that we had 5 turtles with radio-transmitters-- that effort yielded no new turtles besides the 5 we already had. They just aren't out there anymore, so the data we present in this paper represents a decade of effort and really is the only data on hatchlings and juveniles that we have from the state. I wish it was different and we could design more studies and track hatchlings from multiple nests at multiple sites, but that isn't feasible here. We are lucky to have been able to conduct this study as it was, and got very lucky these hatchling transmitters lasted for 2 months, given that they must be so small that the battery life is only guaranteed for a few weeks. It is fairly standard procedure to allow hatchling a few weeks for their shell to harden before attaching a radio transmitter, otherwise they are likely to fall off because we are limited to using 0.1-0.2 of a gram of epoxy so that the additional weight is not a physiological burden.

I doubt that their behavior was affected by raising them in the lab for a few weeks. Our results were very similar to the few other studies of hatchlings of this species and they behaved quite normally.  Like many juvenile wood turtles, they spent much of their time being solitary and hiding and avoided interactions with other turtles even though their clutch mates were often nearby. Before these few studies of hatchling behavior were conducted, most researchers would have said that these turtles would head straight to the stream and enter water after hatching.  Now that a few studies exist, we've learned that is not what is typical. They often stay near the nest site and bury in deep vegetation or in the substrate and don't seek out the stream. That's exactly what we observed, and it's consistent with the few other studies out there. That offers us a valuable lesson in species management as the conclusion of the manuscript states-- nest sites are not only crucial for the current generation and future generations of turtles, but also last year's hatchlings are often (cryptically) still in the immediate area.

Comment 3: Line 47: change “that lies at” to “on”

Response: revision fully adopted, we changed the text from “that lies at” to “on.”  The sentence now reads: "The Iowa population is a peripherally isolated population of this species on the southwestern edge of its range,..."

Comment 4: Line 53: You give a percent so it would be better to say “low percentage”

Response: revision fully adopted, we changed the text from “number” to “percentage.”  The sentence now reads: "...and exhibits an extremely low percentage of juveniles (7.3%)."

Comment 5: Line 54: Should be past tense – so “were” not “are”

Response: revision fully adopted, we changed the text from “are” to “were.”  The sentence now reads: "Over 45% of the 150 individuals encountered in Iowa over the past 22 years were estimated to be adults over 30 yrs-old."

Comment 6: Lines 68-85: Is this really needed in the Introduction?

Response: We think this paragraph clarifies the reasons why we utilized three metrics of Minimum Convex Polygon (50%, 95%, and 100%) and two measures on Kernel Density Estimators (50% and 95%). These measures are used variably with most turtle home range papers-- some use only MCPs, some use only 50% and 100% MCPs, some use both MCPs and KDEs. Without this paragraph for context, readers unfamiliar with these measures would not know why we used all 5 of them or how and why they differ.

Comment 7: Lines 145-146: I’m not sure north should be capitalized.

Response: revision fully adopted, we changed upper case North to lower case in this sentence. The sentence now reads: "The MC site is approximately 100 km north of the BHC site and 120 km north (by stream channel; 70 km straight-line distance) of the BC site."

Comment 7: Lines 162-166: Provide the scientific names for these species.

Response: the scientific names for these species are already provided in lines 160-162. We only present scientific names when they appear for the first time.

Comment 8: Lines 177-178: Any concerns about generalizability since these are all from the same clutch?

Response: We aren't overly concerned with this, but as stated above in the response to comment 2, we were limited to this particular sampling design.  The state DNR would not approve releasing hatchlings from locations other than the original nest site (nor would we recommend that or ask to), and we were limited to spending a few thousand dollars to purchase 9 hatchling transmitters (2 turtles were censored from the analysis due to reduced sample locations) that only are guaranteed to last a few weeks. We could have placed 1 or 2 transmitters on other hatchlings from other nests, but then we would have had issues with extremely low sample sizes, comparisons between different sites, and the logistics of visiting field sites in multiple counties multiple times per week (we all had teaching and class responsibilities in addition to our research duties). This was the only way the study was feasible. Because radio tracking hatchlings is relatively rare (only a handful of studies exist over the past 40 years since the technology was developed), these data are still highly valuable to our understanding of wood turtle behavior.

Comment 9: Line 202: Do biweekly and bimonthly mean 2x per week/month or every two weeks/months?

Response: we clarified this sentence, it now reads: "Cumulatively, juvenile turtles were tracked approximately biweekly (twice a week during active period months) to bimonthly (twice a month during winter dormancy) with radio telemetry from May 2014 through November 2024. Juvenile turtles were sampled once per field site visit."

Comment 10: Lines 207-208: Were they internal or external antennae for the transmitters?

Response: these models of VHF transmitters use external antennae. We are unaware of any turtle researchers that use internal antennae, although some researchers used to wrap the antenna around the shell margin rather than let them trail behind the turtle. This latter technique has fallen out of favor and most (all?) wood turtle researchers using external, trailing antennae.

Comment 11: Line 244 (see also lines 269-272): I’m not sure I understand why this is a repeated measures ANOVA. What was the repeated measure?

Response: we used repeated measures ANOVA because we are sampling the same individual turtles over and over.  For example, the variation observed when sampling 6 hatchling turtles 22 times each is expected to be less than if sampling 132 turtles for a single observation each. The repeated measures analysis takes this into account (thus the bar for statistical significance is slightly more robust than an independent measures analysis, even if the alpha level is set for 0.05 for each).

Comment 12: Lines 251-252: Please provide the citation for the R packages.

Response: the R packages are cited on line 251 (citations 46 and 47). The adehabitat package is cited in line 252 (citation 48). The text reads:

"We used Microsoft Excel (version 16.99; Redmond, Washington, USA) and the statistical program R (version 4.4.2) to generate summary statistics (mean, standard deviation [SD], SE and minimum [min] and maximum [max] values) and used the ‘lme4’ package (version 1.1-35.1) in R to run single factor ANOVAs with repeated measures to determine if age class significantly affected home range size or distance from water [46,47]. We estimated home range using the functions of ‘mcp’ and ‘kernelUD’ in the ‘adehabitatHR’ package (version 0.4.22) in R [48]."

Comment 13: Lines 289, 297, 302: Is this total or per hatchling? What was the mean number per hatchling? What was the range?

Response: these observation numbers are total. Mean number per hatchling was 21.83, range was 21-22. All hatchlings were sampled 22 times, except for one which was sampled 21 times because it was inaccessible due to high stream levels. This information is presented in Table 1.

Comment 14: Lines 306-319: Don’t repeat information in text and tables.

Response: we agree with this in principle but this paragraph only presents the ranges and doesn't replicate the other values that are listed in Table 1.  If we removed those values that are replicated in the text, then the table would be incomplete; if we removed the ranges from the text and just cite the table, then the text is not very informative. If the editors and reviewer feel strongly about this, then we could delete lines 314-322 from the current version, but the entire paragraph would only be two sentences and would read: "Mean home range size of hatchling Wood Turtles was significantly smaller than the mean home range of older juvenile turtles for all MCP and KDE home range metrics (Table 1).  For visual comparison, Figure 1 presents representative 100%, 95%, and 50% MCP home range sizes of hatchling and juvenile individuals with small, moderate, and large home ranges (using all juvenile locations)."

If that is preferable, we would agree to edit those lines out but think a minimal amount of replication is acceptable and gives the values some context for comparison.

Comment 15: Line 307: Extraneous period towards the end of the line.

Response: thank you for catching that. The extra period has been removed from line 307 (now line 313).

Comment 16: Lines 348-355, 375-381: How compare to available?

Response: we are unsure what the reviewer is referring to with this question. Do you mean how long is the available stream section? If so, this information is presented in the methods on lines 152-158 (of the current version), and the stream sections extend many miles past the study area boundaries at each of the sites we sampled.

Comment 17:  Again, don’t repeat information in text and tables.

Response: similar to our response to comment 14, we only list the ranges for context and if we remove these sentences, the text would read: "Across all observations, mean (± SE) distance from water by hatchling and juvenile Wood Turtles in Iowa is presented in Figure 5."

We think presenting the ranges offers some context with only a minimum of replication with the values in the Figure and allows us to describe the differences in all observations versus those with reduced data (for better comparison between hatching and juvenile samples). If the editors and reviewer feel that is highly preferable, we would agree to edit those lines out.

Comment 18: Lines 409-426: Why report MS and SS? They are not typically provided and are not really neded. Also it should just be F, not F-value. The F should also have two degrees of freedom reported.

Response: we have seen MS and SS reported before and the senior author has had reviewers request that those be included when they were initially left out of an ANOVA table. However, we agree with the reviewer and have removed those from the table and edited F-value to "F" (and t-value to t) and corrected the degrees of freedom.

Comment 19: Table 2: Did you correct p-values for repeated analyses?

Response: yes, these p-values were produced by the repeated measures analysis and thus were corrected.

Comment 20: Line 448 and throughout: Don’t focus so much on the statistical analyses – focus on the results and patterns.

Response: We included details of the statistical analyses in the results section and focus on results and patterns in the discussion, as is customary. If we had included less detail of the analysis, another reviewer would likely ask us to include more statistical detail of the analysis. We feel that our statistical analysis is very robust and is a strength of the paper. Our discussion is already very lengthy and represents a comprehensive assessment of patterns.

Comment 21: Line 459: The chi-squared tests were not significantly different – the hatchlings and juveniles differed. The results need to be rewritten to be more result focused not analysis focused.

Response: with all due respect, we think the reviewer may have misread the text. The text reads: "The χ² tests were highly significantly different (P <0.0001) for each comparison, indicating that hatchlings and juveniles utilized habitat types independently. Comparisons included all aquatic versus terrestrial observations of hatchlings and juveniles (df = 1, χ² = 154.2, P <0.0001), all observations of hatchlings and all observations of juveniles during the Postnesting and Prebrumation periods only (df = 1, χ² = 101.7, P <0.0001). In addition, χ² tests between all observations of hatchlings and juveniles for all four habitat categories revealed independence (df = 3, χ² = 29.1, P <0.0001) as well as all observations of hatchlings and observations of juveniles only during the Postnesting and Prebrumation periods only for all four habitat categories (df = 3, χ² = 414.7, P <0.0001).

The point is that the χ² tests indicated that the hatchlings and juveniles were different but that when we compared all the juvenile observations with the reduced (fall season only to equate to the hatchling sample period) juvenile data, that those comparisons were not significant. This is a strength of the analysis because it means that even if we only compared hatchlings to all the juvenile observations, the comparison would still be valid.  We included the reduced data sets for juveniles to better compare them with the hatchling sample period.  Had we not done that, I'm sure reviewers would point out that the sampling differences between the two age categories could be problematic.  As it is, the statistical analysis revealed that the observed differences are pronounced and robust.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

thank you for your explanations to my comments. The manuscript now looks good and I don't have any other comments.

Sincerely

Author Response

Thank you for your positive review, we appreciate your time and effort to improve the paper.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have made several changes to the manuscript to improve. However, it would be helpful if they actually included some of their explanations and responses to my earlier comments in the manuscript itself. If I had those concerns I'm sure some readers will also have them, I'm thinking in particular of the comments regarding the potential concerns about using head-started individuals and the use of repeated measures (needs to be clarified what exactly is the repeated measure in the manuscript).

Also, my comment about the "How compare to available?" was referring to the observations on habitat usage (e.g., Figure 2, Figure 4). It would be useful if we knew whether these observed use of these habitats by the turtles simply reflected the availability of those habitat types in nature or if they differed (i.e., did the turtles show any indication of preferences among habitats).

Author Response

Thank you for your careful consideration of our paper and the time you have put into improving the manuscript. We appreciate your efforts.

Comment 1: concern regarding using head-started animals

Response: we agree that a reader might wonder about this issue, and even though this is largely standard procedure for tracking hatchling turtles, we added a short statement in the discussion on lines 495-500 to qualify the meaning of our results. We hope the reviewer is satisfied that we had no choice other than to wait until the hatchling's shells had hardened enough for the epoxy and transmitter to remain attached and their growth had reached a stage in which carrying the transmitter was not a physiological burden.  The lines that we added read:

"Our habitat usage results for the hatchlings may have been influenced by the nest location, which was on an open sand beach. However, areas of deciduous forest, open canopy grass and forb habitat, and extensive riverbank and stream habitat all existed within 20 m of the nest site/release location. In addition, maintaining the hatchlings in the lab for several weeks before release was necessary to facilitate transmitter attachment, and this may have affected their behavior."

Comment 2: clarifying the use of repeated measures ANOVA

Response: we added a short explanation in the methods section to clarify why we would use a repeated measures analysis on lines 249-250. The relevant text now reads:

"We used Microsoft Excel (version 16.99; Redmond, Washington, USA) and the statistical program R (version 4.4.2) to generate summary statistics (mean, standard deviation [SD], SE and minimum [min] and maximum [max] values) and used the ‘lme4’ package (version 1.1-35.1) in R to run single factor ANOVAs with repeated measures (because the same individual turtles were sampled multiple times) to determine if age class significantly affected home range size or distance from water [46,47]. 

Comment 3: regarding habitat usage versus habitat availability

Response: we understand the reviewer's concern, but this is a "habitat usage" paper, and not a "habitat selection" analysis. If the terms "habitat selection" or "habitat preference" are used, then observed habitat usage must be compared to habitat availability, which in turn needs to be quantified.  Quantifying habitat availability is not within the scope of the current paper, which is why we avoided using the term habitat selection and used the term habitat usage in the title and throughout the paper. Quantifying habitat availability would be an arduous process that would be complicated by changes in habitat throughout the 10-year sampling period of the juveniles, the temporal variation in field conditions at the 3 sites (which vary and are separated by long distances) and would result in a much more complicated and lengthy paper. The paper is already lengthy and complicated enough as is, and includes lot of results that are detailed in nature. Adding more analyses and results would be difficult for the reader to ingest. For this very reason, we included a statement in the discussion on lines 491-493 stating that we did not quantify habitat availability. Those lines read:

"Although we did not quantify habitat availability, multiple areas of each habitat type were present within the mean LHR distances of both age classes."