Roosting Behavior of Northern Long-Eared Bats (Myotis septentrionalis) in an Urban-Adjacent Forest Fragment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

General comment regarding length: We attempted to reduce or condense text where possible without removing the discussion of interpretations we find important.

General comment regarding “use” vs. “selection”: We maintained some cases of the term ‘selection’ and added a sentence explaining the case in which our sample size might be an appropriate representation of selection in a small population. We hope our adjustments appropriately clarify some restrictions in the implications of our work.

General comment regarding habitat: We worked to remain consistent with definitions supported by Hall et al. (1997). Some misuses of the term ‘habitat’ and related terms were changed to more suitable language.

Line 31: We removed “habitats” from this sentence altogether.

Line 38: We changed “habitats” to “land cover types” as it is a more appropriate term for what we mean.

Line 48 – 54: Several citations provided in this sentence address the importance of tree roosts for maternity colonies in the context of the language we originally used in the sentence.  We added slightly more detail to the sentence in lines 52 – 54 to emphasize the tendency for reproductive females to form groups. Should we add more detail or citations to further emphasize this aspect of tree roost importance?

Line 60 – 64: We adjusted the language of this sentence to reflect the impact of WNS specifically on bats that hibernate in North America. Although not all hibernating bat species are strongly affected by the effects of WNS, we believe this is beyond the scope of our introduction, and hope that the language we used (i.e. “many hibernating bat species”) sufficiently reflects this fact.

Line 65: We made this adjustment as requested.

Line 72: We updated the common name of the study species to that used by USFWS and authors of recent literature (northern long-eared bat). Northern myotis is still an acceptable term, but not used as often. We had initially used it to reduce paper length and improve ease of writing, since we used the species name so often.

Line 197: Previous forestry and bat research have used this assessment standard, although no primary research establishing this definition could be found. We added citations for previous work and the language “(i.e., larger than a sapling)” to clarify why we chose that DBH threshold.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this manuscript. On the one hand, it is based on minimal research material (data from radiotracking 4 individuals). On the other hand, it concerns an endangered species (referred to as "federally threatened"). In the era of losses in North American bat populations caused by the WNS, such research is needed. Taking this into account, studies of this species' nesting preferences are important for its protection in forests. The authors, despite a small sample, conducted as intensive field research as possible and obtained relatively large material. Some of their observations (the preference for the type of shelters chosen by females) bring new elements to the knowledge about the species and are in themselves a very important contribution to the protection of the species, which the authors emphasized in the "Discussion". For this reason, I rate this research quite highly.

Detailed comments to the text:

Line 2. Please provide the full scientific name of the species under study in the title.

Line 4. Whose address is this? Of both authors? Please make it more clear.

Line 146. Figure 1. I understand that the three netting points placed on the map are those where the studied species was caught, while the total number of points was 8 (as mentioned in the text), but in the remaining points this species was not caught, and therefore they are not included in the map, corrects ? This is not clear enough.

Line 162. Surgical adhesive used: latex or cyanoacrylic?

Line 239. What about the fifth bat (3% from 172 is 5)?

Line 242. It is relatively short period. Why? Poor attachment of the transmitters, wrong glue, something else?

Line 301. More information about roosts will be welcome. Woodpecker cavities, or crevices or maybe under the protruding bark? It should be clearly stated in "Results", before the discussion.

Line 325. This result could also be the result of - perhaps - too small sample of tracked animals. Therefore, I would be more careful in conclusions.

Author Response

Line 2: We updated the common name of the study species to that used by USFWS and authors of recent literature (northern long-eared bat). The scientific name (Myotis septentrionalis) is still the currently accepted classification for northern long-eared bats.

Line 5: The address provided is a suitable physical address for both authors. On published articles, we see that each author will have a mail logo next to their name with a hyperlink, but we do not know how to provide author emails for the time being.

Line 152 – 157: Figure 1. We added language that we hope makes it clear that we netted eight sites, but only three were of interest regarding northern long-eared bats. We omitted the other netting sites in Figure 1 to reduce the amount of visual information and make it more comprehensible. We could include a list of all net sites in an appendix, if that would be useful to the reviewer and future readers.

Line 170: We used surgical cement from Perma-Type Company, Inc., which states that the surgical adhesive contains latex.

Line 245: At a biodiversity survey of 2019, we opportunistically tracked a reproductive female of interest, which inspired the 2020 – 2021 project. We also captured a male in 2019, but reserved our limited transmitters for other species. We added language clarifying this reasoning to our results.

Line 250 – 251: Previous reports have had similar issues specifically with northern long-eared bats. Glue quality and weather factors can also affect transmitter attachment, but there appears to be a species-level trend. We added citations for papers that had similar problems.

Lines 306 – 321: Given that the transmitters may not have been situated exactly in the bat roosts, it may not be appropriate to report the specific transmitter location. However, we added the condition (live or dead) for each tree surveyed to provide further detail on the context of our data. To the best of our knowledge, the 2020 male roosted in a live eastern cottonwood crevice, two females in 2021 were underneath exfoliating bark in solar-exposed silver maple snags, and the final tree we surveyed was a woodpecker hole in a solar-exposed silver maple snag.

Line 325: We added a statement at the end of the first discussion paragraph, which we hope will clarify the limitations of our small sample size in making statistical inferences.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you to the authors for revising them manuscript and incorporating comments.  Any remaining comments I have are tied to minor editorial issues that will be picked up my the copy editor.