Winter Diet Pattern of Snow Leopard and Factors Affecting Livestock Depredation in Nubri Valley of Manaslu Conservation Area, Nepal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for authors

Lines 23-24. Change of font

Lines 93-95. It is not clear what is meant by the effect of family size and education on livestock predation. A hypothesis on this point would be suggestive.

Lines 97-102. Change of font.

Lines 123-129. Change of font

Lines 128-130 How do social characteristics affect predation on livestock? When questions are asked, hypotheses should be tested.

Lines 135 -137. The hypotheses raised could be further substantiated. For example, why do we think that leopards in this area do not prey on livestock, and what are the characteristics of the area that make us think this? The second question does not generate a hypothesis and could be relevant. What is said in the other works, where it is known that there is predation on livestock, to explain the predation of the leopard?

Line 139. Study area. Give the climate of the area (temperature, rainfall, etc.).

Lines 151-152. The musk deer is not a predator.

Line 167. The work was carried out in only three months, please give the start and end dates, not just the month; also mention what the climatic conditions were during this period.

Lines 172-173, give the largest and smallest interval of transect size.

Lines 176-177. This seems very subjective, how do the authors make this description of odour and consistency so that it can be replicated and taken as an identification of the excreta.

Lines 178-179. This categorisation is also subjective, could you expand on the explanation? Moisture, colour, consistency or shape? Give some references that have been used for this categorisation of scat time, even with other felids if necessary. Why less than 10 days? How do you know? It also depends on the weather conditions, for example, rainy days spoil scats more quickly.

Lines 182-183. In how many camera hours and in what percentage was the leopard recorded? What does "close to camera" mean? Maximum distance? Radius around the camera?

Lines 183-185. The explanation is ambiguous, please specify what you mean by similar characteristics in leopard and wolf scats. Specify numerically what you mean by smaller scat sizes for fox and jackal. In all cases, give scientific names not previously given.

Line 189. What kind of coordinates? and include GPS marker.

Line 204. How was the number of camera trap nights estimated?

Lines 222-225. It is not clear whether the laboratory analysis of scat was done by sample, split zone, transect, month, fresh or old samples? Please specify.

Lines 248-249. How was this human-leopard conflict area identified?

Line 254. The full questionnaire can be included as supplementary material if it is extensive. A question about the strategies used by the villagers to counter leopard predation would have been interesting.

Lines 259-260. How many years of information?

Line 264. What kind of livestock is there in the area, is it all the same breed?

Line 291. Please indicate which variables related to livestock predation were included in the GLMM.

Line 311. Why do you say "almost" and not just the exact percentage?

Line 314. Please correct the typography.

Line 317. Please state the location of the study. Could you include the scientific names of the species not mentioned in the text? I suggest changing the pie chart to bars.

Lines 326-327. Please give the scientific names.

Line 335. Scientific names and full words in spp.

Line 346. Two cases in the study period, and the other cases in which period?

Lines 361-362. I suggest deleting this sentence and keeping only Table 4 immediately after the sentence mentioning the 9 models.

Line 364. Include all the symbols referring to the table and delete the semicolon at the end of the line.

Line 374. There is no Table 6.

Lines 378-379. The set of these two percentages is high 38.46%, it is interesting to discuss the need for environmental education and awareness programmes.

Line 386. Change some to a number.

Line 392 (Discussion). It is best to start the discussion by mentioning one of the main findings of the study and then make a comparison with other similar studies. In this paragraph it would be better to talk about leopard prey and then compare it with similar references.

Line 400. What is meant by common prey?

Line 442. Change large species to large prey.

Lines 455-458. These are better hypotheses to test, they should be mentioned in the introduction to the paper.

Line 461. Add the sentence at the end: ...to avoid predation on livestock.

Lines 467-468. What level of education? And why do you think that?

Line 484. Was this question asked in the surveys, e.g. how often did the management committee contact the villagers? This is important to support this statement, as well as the educational programmes.

Line 488. I suggest that you write the conclusions based on the hypotheses rather than the questions, although they should be related. The hypotheses that appear in the discussion can also be considered.

Line 490. It is not necessary to include numerical data or to mention the indices in the conclusions. Try to briefly summarise the most important points, accepting or rejecting the hypotheses put forward and indicating the highlighted knowledge explored in the text. Change indicated a horse po indicated a horse.

Line 512. I would like to know if there was a declaration by the inhabitants.

I suggest adding some photographs of leopards in camera traps to the text.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We have submitted our response to Reviewer 1 in docx format.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Simple study on the diet of the snow leopard that contributes to greater knowledge of the seasonal trophic habits of this species. Some interesting data is also provided about human attitudes towards the Snow Leopard, where you suggest a change in human attitudes towards the Snow leopard (lines 463-465). I only suggest a few clarifications on several matters that I indicate to you.

 

Lines 172-173. The short distance of the transects carried out to scat collected seems striking to me. Why are the transects so short? It should be explained and justified.

Lines 173-174. Why were genetic analyzes not carried out to verify the species?

Line 363. Table 3 is not cited in the text, although I sense an error on line 362 when including Table 4.

Pay attention to the numbering of the tables.

Lines 417-419. Indicate and cite the studies to which you refer.

Author Response

We have submitted our responses to Reviewer 2 in docx format.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Minor suggestions:

- Line 195, remove italics in sp., should read Quercus sp.

- Lines 428-430, remove internal lines of the graph and put scientific names in italics.

- Lines 452-453, remove inner lines of graph and remove italics in spp. Should say Mustela spp.

- Line 736. It is not necessary to mention the Jacob index, just leave the statement.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf