Bush Encroachment and Large Carnivore Predation Success in African Landscapes: A Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The review manuscript entitled “bush encroachment and large carnivore predation success in African landscapes: A review” is interesting. I have a couple of questions regarding methods. The rationale behind the study and methods need to be improved. Please find my comments below.
Line 30: Phenomenon means Bush encroachment?
Lines 38-39: Better to elaborate this sentence with examples
Line 49-50: Please give examples species specific
Lines 51-53; 53-55, 55-56: Reference?
Methods
I suggest authors do a meta-analysis because it gives trends, strengths, and weaknesses of existing studies. I suggest you because you have data for the last 10 years and also you mentioned cumulative results (line 86).
Follow the Journal format for Figure or Fig.
For data collection, there might be some important reports, especially from Government. It seems the authors avoid it. Is there any reason?
I am not sure of the scientific meaning of Figure 1
Line 367: encroachment and Smit and Prins mean?
Line 395: Need to define KNP and there are also other abbreviations that need to define.
Author Response
please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Very well written and interesting synthesis with applied management considerations. The only thing I can suggest is to make a clear the link for future efforts in the discussion/conclusion section to the intro, where you list the complex, interrelated causal factors.
Author Response
Reviewer 2:
Very well written and interesting synthesis with applied management considerations. The only thing I can suggest is to make a clear the link for future efforts in the discussion/conclusion section to the intro, where you list the complex, interrelated causal factors.
** Authors ** Thank you for the constructive assessment of our manuscript. We endeavoured to make the link more explicit and have adjusted the “Conclusions and Future Research” section to include more information on future research regarding key drivers of bush encroachment. The lines number included below refer to the revised manuscript with track changes: “Effects appear to be species and region-specific, but trends suggest a community shift towards browsing herbivorous species and smaller prey in bush-encroached areas, lower prey species diversity, as well as changes in prey availability, and possibly in vulnerability to predation” (lines 548-552). “Understanding the drivers of bush encroachment and quantifying their relative as well as cumulative contributions, remain important focus areas for research. Efforts should continue to also focus on impacts on vegetation structure, composition and density triggered by altered herbivore communities, such as reduction or extirpation of megaherbivores, shifts in smaller herbivores from grazers to browsers, as well as overgrazing by livestock. The impacts of changes in fire regimes and influence of climatic factors also need to be understood, as they will likely increasingly affect the ecology of African savannas and grasslands in complex and dynamic ways” (lines 570-577). “Additionally, behavioural studies, particularly those assessing competitive interactions among large carnivores in bush-encroached areas, are severely lacking and would likely yield context-dependent insights, suggesting that studies should occur across ecosystems and in varying carnivore guilds. For example, cheetahs and African wild dogs are threatened and endangered subordinate predators among large African carnivores, making them vulnerable to both top-down and bottom-up effects caused by bush encroachment; whereas in systems where lions and spotted hyenas have been lost, subordinate carnivores might have different responses in habitat selection with bush encroachment, due to absence of top-down regulation that operates in intact large carnivore guilds” (lines 581-590). “Future work should explore the indirect effects of bush encroachment on competitive interactions among large predators according to their hunting strategy, sociobiology, and dominance hierarchy, to inform the conservation of carnivores at most risk” (lines 593-596).
