The Habitat Network for Butterfly Communities of the Alta Murgia National Park (Apulia, Italy)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I have carefully read your research article entitled “The habitat network for butterfly communities of the Alta Murgia National Park (Apulia, Italy)”. I find your study has merit because it analyses the butterfly diversity of some Mediterranean habitats of high conservation interest as a proxy for monitoring environmental quality and sensitivity of these habitats to climate and anthropogenic pressures. However, I found the wording awkward in some parts of the manuscript. Further, there were several grammatical and syntactical mistakes. Moreover, the Methods, Results and Discussion sections were quite messy. This hampers a comprehensive understanding about the ratio behind the choice of some analytical procedures, about the main outcomes of such analyses as well as about how these outcomes could advance knowledge on the sensitivity of butterfly communities and associated vegetation of the Alta Murgia National Park to global change.

Please find in the attached file a list of major and minor comments which I hope could help you in noticeably improving the quality of your manuscript.

Best regards

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment for details. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The description of research results and conclusions in the Abstract is too brief. For example, what are the main results or conclusions from the comparative analysis of the three habitats? And so on.

 2. In the Introduction part, there is a lack of review and comment on relevant research status at home and abroad.

3. The main innovations of this study need to be added.

 4. The authors mentioned the impact of changes in extreme events on biodiversity, but there is no research result on the impact of changes in extreme events on butterfly biodiversity in this paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.
Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments

Abstract

22. Specify how many species/specimens did you find?

23. Endemic species should be also added in the abstract

Materials and Methods

Butterfly surveys – this subchapter is not well explained

147. How many times – once a month/several times per month/once a week?

149. How many transects did you perform?

Results

173. There is not table 2 in the manuscript or I could not find it

199. This statement “forest edge and woody forest habitats were the richest” is not refer to the table 3. On the other hand, in the table 3. all these indices are higher for DGL compared to OFP and PEP?

205-207. These lines should be moved in Discussion.

223. “Highest frequency was recorded in May and September”, figure 4. shown some different data.  High number of individuals was also recorded in April. Number should be added in the text.

225. There is not any figure in the manuscript you refer to? I could not find it? What did you compare here, abundance in 2016., 2017., or some specific month?

229. The same as the line 225!

Discussion

258. I understand this statement, but I did not find any argument in Results that could confirm that.

260-262. It is not enough clear how is this statement about isolation connected with your results/data. Can you please provide two or three sentences to support this statement.

Conclusions

Conclussion is too general and Authors should be focused on the main findings of the paper.

 

321-322. These lines should be added in chapter Discussion.   

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I found the revised version of your manuscript noticeably improved compared to the previous one. Yet, some clarifications and style improvements are needed in my opinion before your MS could be published.

Please find below a list of suggestions to improve the text; line numbering refers to the PDF file of the revised manuscript version.

L. 16: “the areas of danger to which each of them is subjected in differentiations” is not very clear. Did you mean something like “the various threats to which each of them is subjected”?

L. 46-50: To improve the syntax of this sentence, consider changing to “In the AMNP, floristic composition of dry grasslands delineates a peculiar pseudo-steppe, characterized by the endemic grass Stipa austroitalica, which has a restricted range in Southern Italy and is listed as a priority species in Annex II of the Habitats Directive and under Appendix I of the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (Bern Convention)”.

L. 104: Add “a” before “high variety” or replace it with “several”.

L. 134: Quercus pubescens is repeated twice in the list of dominant tree species; please check this sentence.

L. 165: To avoid the repetition of “using” twice in this sentence, you may change “using 9 transect surveys” to "during 9 transect surveys".

L. 170: replace “Fotetrex” with “Foretrex”.

L. 181: Add the round closing bracket after “two surveyed individuals”.

L. 182: To make this statement clearer, I suggest rephrasing to something like “Differences in the values of each considered biodiversity index among the three habitats were studied…”. Otherwise, I may seem you are contrasting the values of an index with those of another index.

L. 186: Why you wrote "habitat/ecosystem" here while in the previous sections you referred to dry grassland, oak forest and pinewood simply as habitats? You should choose a single denomination to refer to your target environments and use it throughout the manuscript.

L. 187: In your reply letter you state you added information on how you fitted the GLM but I could not find this in the revised manuscript version…please add at least the fact you used Poisson distribution for the response variable…for instance: “…were evaluated using generalized linear model (GLM), fitted through the SPSS software by assuming Poisson distribution for the response variable (i.e. abundance data).”

L. 191: Remove either “program” or “software” to avoid redundancy.

L. 199: Add the final ‘s’ to ‘habitat’ as you are referring to three habitat types.

L. 241: in the caption of Fig. 3, correct to “relationship between species and habitat types”.

L.245-246: What do you mean here by "high value"? High abundance? High PCA score? Please specify it clearly.

L. 258: Remove the doubled round brackets.

L. 271: Add “habitat types” after “three” at the end of Figure 4 caption.

L. 261-266: the syntax here is a bit weird; I suggest rephrasing to something like: “Month of first record and monthly abundance were reported, for each recorded butterfly species, in Table 4. Some of the recorded species are of conservation concern: according to the European Red List of Butterflies [49], N. polychloros (the “blackleg tortoiseshell”) is classified as a vulnerable species, while M. trivia, C. flocciferus and H. statilinus are near threatened. Finally, M. arge (the “Italian marbled white”) is a European endemism listed in the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC [50]”.

L. 325-327: these lines are still not clear about the role of species recorded as singletons…in your reply letter to my previous review report, you stated that “Singletons in the butterfly surveys would have low chance to reproduce and could play significant ecological role in local rarefaction or extinction of population. Here the number of singletons was low in total butterfly community.”. I suggest replacing L. 325-327 with this statement, which is much clearer.

L. 340: To improve syntax, I suggest replacing “It seems to be consistent, including in this survey, that the most specialized species…” with something like “It is widely acknowledged that the most specialized species usually have the highest susceptibility to habitat disturbance. Therefore, preservation of the different habitats is crucial for butterfly conservation as it ensures suitable conditions for specialized species to thrive”.

L. 362-364: the two sentences in these lines are a bit disconnected. I suggest rephrasing to something like “The first flight of some species (i.e., Pyrgus malvoides (Elwes et Edwards), Thymelicus silvestris (Poda)) was registered earlier than in the references, suggesting possible phenological advances linked to global warming but needing further inquiry. In this context, ecological connectivity should be favoured to enhance species displacement capabilities, which could be critical to face global changes”.

Sincerely,

Francesco Cerasoli

Author Response

Dear Dr. Cerasoli,

We fully agree with your observations, therefore we added the missing information and changed unclear sentences following your suggestions. We would like to take this opportunity to really thank you for the effort and expertise that you contributed towards reviewing the article, without which it would be impossible to maintain the high standards of Land Journal.

Best Regards,

Elena Gagnarli and co-Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have revised their manuscript according to the advices.

Author Response

We really thank the Referee for the careful review of our reviewed manuscript. 
Sincerely,
Elena Gagnarli and co-Authors