PONE-D-20-14230

Impact of tourism on habitat use of black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in an isolated population in northern Germany

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Siebert,

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Bi-Song Yue, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: No

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: General Remarks

I have read with interest the study evaluating space use of on endangered bird population in relations to recreational pressure. The study is clearly original and to my knowledge has not been published elsewhere. The data at hand seem to have been evaluated correctly and support the conclusions soundly.

In general however, I think that the data set is limited as (1) a relative short period of bird activity (one season or 60 to 223 days) has been recorded and (2) data of human recreational activity was monitored in different time frame as the bird spatial data. The second point provides problems for some of the graphs (Fig 5 and 6) where both data sets are shown in direct relation to each other. Overall, I think that the hypothesis (=grouse avoids human presence) and the resulting conclusions are hardly surprising and do not contribute much to field per se. Despite this, the study contributes information to regional aspect of the species and is worth publishing despite the above shortcoming. As PLOS One is less concerned with overall impact on the scientific field, this alone might be not a reason to reject.

The text is written mostly in standard English but phrasing is awkward in places (see under specific remarks) and the manuscript is in need of overall language editing.

Specific remarks

Line 78: rephrase otherwise unclear. Maybe state it more directly: Does distance to trail depends on intensity of recreational use.

Line 79 Rephrase the sentence. Suggestion:

Do black grouse alter temporal habitat use due to hiking activity Or: Do b c avoid certain areas during times of increased hiking activity?

Line 89 strange statement. Please revise: A peak number of 78 individual was counted in 2007 during annual censuses conducted by ....

Line 106ff It was not only grazing that kept the forest from returning. Cutting and removing of organic soil swards (plaggen, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaggen_soil ) used to be the traditional use of heath landscapes. Results were reduced organic soil horizon and reduced nutrient availability. A good citation of this practice and its result for the local ecology would be: Leuschner C & Ellenberg, H. 2017 Vegetation Ecology of Central Europe

Line 130: Please add more details about the GPS loggers, were they battery operated, solar?

Line 145: Pleases revise sentence. It reads now as if the populations size went down because of the monitoring (I hope this was not the case).

Line 148: Is their information on the age and status of the birds available? Adult vs. first year at least should be possible. weight?

Line 166 Does that mean that no life stock nor larger wildlife used the trails at all? Can this be excluded?

Line 171: Please clarify: random points are not equally distributed

Line 235: Explain the graph a bit more, e.g. what does the thickness of the "violin body" stands for

Line 302: The different time [periods covered are indeed a major problem, especially for the analysis of data shown in Fig 5 and 6. I don’t think these graphs should be used for that reason. The use of categories and levels as use in the other graphs is appropriate.

Line 309 Can data analysis for this tested assumption be shown? In general, all this might be better placed under methods.

Reviewer #2: This paper has examined the impact of tourism on the habitat use of black grouse population in northern Germany.

However, the reviewers were unable to clarify the purpose of this manuscript and could not be convinced that there was sufficient evidence to support the views expressed in the discussion.

Reviewer would like the authers to reorganize the sentence and the data as a whole.

In addition, please address the following points.

L84-126: The historical or social background of the Study area should be explained in the “introduction” or “discussion”.

L129-150: Reviewer could not read the history of individual tracking, tagging, tag swapping, predation, etc. for each bird.

What does "Cause of loss" in Table 1 mean?

Does the "Transmitting days" difference affect the analysis of the data?

L162-164: Therefore, we considered each trigger as a potential disturbance event and as a relative instead of an exact number of visitors. What is mean the word “a relative”?　Please describe it specifically as "a cumulative total number" or describe the method of counting.

L152-168: In this study, it seems to have collected differently meaningful data. Each method and procedure should be explained separately.

1. Frequency of passive visitors counted with reflective infrared light barriers.

2. Verifying the reliability of light barrier functioning.

3. Handling technically flawed or obviously manipulated recordings.

L264: The word "the heather bloom" is only mentioned in L264, what does it mean?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Takeshi Kawasaki

Impact of tourism on habitat use of black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in an isolated population in northern Germany

PONE-D-20-14230R1

Dear Dr. Siebert,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Bi-Song Yue, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE