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The paper is now in an acceptable form and ready for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Richard Schuster, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
The authors have addressed all concerns and the reviewers as well as I am happy with the latest revision; the manuscript is almost ready to be sent for publication.
Please delete the following sentence in the abstract (which is also not referred to in the text any further as far as I see), which may be true theoretically, but can hardly be measured and should be counted as insignificant:
"Insects that fly at elevations within the diameter of turbine rotors may be more likely to strike turbines, which can decrease the turbine’s energy output."
Thanks
All elements of the manuscript have been properly prepared, including the data provided. The language is clear, the extensive literature has been supplemented in missing places. I have no more comments.
The methods section has been supplemented with missing information and improved, which makes the research approach more understandable. Necessary information about the origin of individual data used in the analyses has been added. I have no more comments
This article is highly beneficial for entomologists, and ecologists in general. The results provide missing knowledge necessary for effective insect protection. I have no more comments.
I appreciate the idea of making this review and thank you for your job!
Thank you for your revisions. I’m not requesting any additional changes.
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There are still some minor issues raised, please address these and we may consider the manuscript for acceptance. Especially clear up the confusion the reviewers have with the case study and the clear up confusion in captions. Make sure that all data is available as indicated in the manuscript, and if it is, make sure that its location is clear to the reader.
As in my previous review, I view the manuscript as extremely useful and important, and at the same time until recently mussing in the corpus of literature. I highly value the courage of the authors to comprehensvely approach this timely, and controversial, topic, and will be glad to see it printed.
I am satisfied with the authros' answers to my suggestions and criticisms, although some of this could be handled better - specifically, the massive text could have been shortened a bit more radically. On the other hand, I went through comments of my co-referees as well, and understand that the authors had to navigate among sometimes contrary suggestions, the co-referees asking to explain something in more detail, or to supplement more evidence.
Trying to be objective, and to leave some room for the authors' disrcetions, I am not asking for further changes.
The study is review, not experiment, so this query is only partly applicable. Still, the original data used for illustration seem to be well-selected and used, and my co-referees were exhaustive in asking more details, such as R-scripts used.
The entire text is well supported by referring to existing studies, some original data, and solid bacground in insect physiology, behaviour, and population ecology.
Congratulations for the nice manuscript!
The article is written in a concise, understandable and professional language. Extensive references provided. Introduction - nicely structured, easy to read. Raw data has been shared. Results align with the hypotheses stated in the objectives. The figures accurately illustrate and summarise the manuscript's content, and have been greatly improved over the previous version. I have indicated minor errors to be corrected in the main part of the review.
These are original dala analyzed along with the comprehensive review and combined with previously collected data from other studies. Research questions are well-defined I have just a slight suggestion that I stated below. The description of the methods has been improved, it is now more understandable, but I still have a few comments that should complete some information. There are some limitations to the conclusions related to the research methodology, which I detailed in the review file and below:
Methods:
L153 - 161: this part still confuses me, whether it is some part of a "case study" or a completely separate study. The next part with the results dispels these doubts, however at this stage it is not known which part of the hypotheses this study refers to. In fact, the hypotheses in this part of the study were not emphasized in the objectives of the manuscript at the end of Introduction and therefore this paragraph is difficult to link with the previous content. Moreover, from this part you refer to data obtained by Dority (2019), but it is not known if these studies were published, because they are not listed in the bibliography. If this is unpublished data, it should be specified. It is also unknown whether this additional data was collected in the same place with a similar methodology as the data in 2022.
L193: There were 24 traps, but was one wind turbine tested? If so, this limits the possibility of drawing conclusions due to the small scale of the study, which should be included in the summary.
L193: In this part of the analysis you used GLMMs, so what was the random factor here? I assume that there was separate analysis, first, abundance and richness with the distance from the turbine (the effect of a turbine in a broader landscape context), second, abundance and richness depending on the position relative to the turbine. I feel the second one is still weakly described considering the variables used in a model.
The impact and novelty are very high considering the timing of the manuscript. Appropriate conclusions are provided along with the results and literature cited with the identification of knowledge gaps and further research and management recommendations.
The revised manuscript has considerably improved. In particular, it is now much clearer to me what are own results from the case study and what are the results from the literature search. This distinction enhances the overall clarity and impact of the work.
However, I have three minor comments that need to be clarified before potential publication:
R-files: I cannot find the R-files RiskAssessment_RegalFritWind and bin_raster as stated in the response to my previous comment 2.1. Could you please provide these files or clarify their availability?
Files in PeerJData directory I have access to:
| 305485 | Dec | 4 | 2023 | DataMaster230302_copy.csv |
| 1832 | Dec | 4 | 2023 | IndicatorTable_copy.csv |
| 1563 | Dec | 4 | 2023 | NMDSTable2_copy.csv |
| 28684 | Dec | 4 | 2023 | Survey123Vanes_copy.csv |
| 22878 | Apr | 26 | 15:51 | Weschler_Tronstad_PeerJData.Rmd |
| 22894 | Apr | 26 | 16:53 | Weschler_Tronstad_PeerJ_Code.R |
| 57213 | Apr | 17 | 2023 | Wind_temp_combined_study.csv |
| 8493 | Apr | 18 | 16:37 | weschler_delina_vanes.csv |
| 6353 | Apr | 18 | 16:45 | weschler_dority_rich.csv |
| 6353 | Apr | 18 | 16:45 | weschler_dority_rich.csv |
Figure 4: I advise specifying which points account for catch rate and which points account for genera (color-coded?). The use of the word "or" in the figure caption is confusing. Please clarify its meaning in this context.
Figure 3: Does the size of the bubbles in Figure 3 scale with area, radius, or another metric? Please specify the scaling method used.
Thank you for your attention to these points.
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Overall, a very timely paper and well-perceived by the reviewers. However, please make sure that all important statements are properly referenced and shorten the overall manuscript to make it easier to read/ facilitate reading by breaking paragraphs etc. Removing repetitive content will help to shorten the text too. Please make sure that the study can be replicated (the literature search procedure was mentioned by one reviewer). Please describe more clearly the method section and revise the interpretation of your results, which seem too hypothetical from times. A better justification is required - without necessarily increasing the length of the paper.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff comments are addressed in a response letter and that any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
It is extremely timely and important text, missing in the Literature, sought for by conservation as well as technology folks… all my compliments to authors.
So much being said, I found it, at places, too long and burdensome. Cutting some of the material by avoiding entomology trivia would help the text, and so, I strongly suggest, shorten it by ca 2 pages, and make it thus more readable.
Somewhere in Introduction, you should “advertise” also the Case study and Risk assessment sections, as they popped out of nowhere in Methods.
The rest of the document, here is a few suggestions/comments.
Around line 55: It would be nice, and hopefully not adding too much length, if you illustrate some of the alleged benefits of wind power (“fewer greenhouse gasses”) but real numbers. The citations you are providing here might have this in, but so important claims really need some numeric backing.
133-5: Remove the sentence about illustrations, or shorten it considerably (“…and presented the results on figures”).
Similarly, the text at lines 150-60 may be condensed to about a half, without information loss.
164-5: Information on approval for a field study does not belong here, but somewhere to Acknowledgements/Funding sections.
174-76: “… using a key modified from Michener et al. (Michener et al. 1994). Bumble bees were identified to species using Williams et al. (Williams et al. 2014)…” re-write as “… using a key modified from Michener et al. (1994). Bumble bees were identified to species using Williams et al. (2014)…”
180: “and those that were rare (<0.1%)” – to what quantity does the percentage refer, is it number of individuals in entire sample? This must be clearly stated.
191: re the gamma distribution. Please, provide also link function in R notations, fore easier reproducibility.
211: NREL? I assume it is a habiats/land covers database, but some explanation (and citation) are needed here.
273 and below (“Sitting” section). Here, you might mention that the legal provisions, etc., probably differ among countries. Although you focus on USA, an information on situation in China and Germany, as other “wind superpowers”, would be useful here.
312-329. The way you refer to Figure 2 (“Fig 2d”) is confusing, as reader expects a figure with several separate panels, and asks, why starting with panel d”. You might change the wording (“see d et Fig. 2), or, perhaps better, not to refer to the individual effects, shorten the whole section, and produce longer and more self-explanatory legend to the figure.
361, 373, 391 (and elsewhere): the same concern with referring to the Figure.
378 and below (Aircraft detection lighting). This system probably increases costs, and maintenance costs. Please, mention this.
407-417. Please, mention somewhere here that very few vertebrate species were so far investigated for the effects of wind turbines noise.
423: “More vulnerable” compared to what? May be, just state “Mmaking those orders vulnerable…” (delete “potentially more”).
468: “Interestingly,…” => Expectably,… (bees are more active at higher temperatures, unless you reach some very critical threshold, which would manifest as 2-nd degree polynomial fitting the data better than linear response in glms).
Lines 485, 502 (and probably elsewhere): see my comment to lines 174-6, above.
Somewhere around 500: The presence of turbines may be also supplying “microhabitats” such as the blocks of concrete, or infrequently driven roads, used by the bees, e.g., as sun-basking or even nesting sites.
528-30: “Insects are poikilothermic; they do not have an internal mechanism to maintain a constant body temperature. Therefore, they must seek external sources of heat to maintain or adjust their body temperature, which may be found at turbines.” – This is one of many cases, when the text may be condensed and shortened, if only you expected some background knowledge of entomology among the readers. “As poikilotherms lacking an internal mechanism to maintain a constant body temperature, insects utilize external sources of heat, which may be found at turbines.”
535-559: The whole section is full of unnecessary truisms (insects have thermoreceptors… they thermoregulate behaviorally) and even incomplete / false statements (“…especially larger individuals, and juveniles, perform thermoregulatory behavior…”). Reduce the section to about half of the size.
560-564: There are much more studies on ambient temperatures necessary for flight than your unpublished study, please, supply the references.
612-641: these paragraphs also contain many information not directly related to your main question. Reduce to a half.
673: The insect flight boundary layer. You have been talking about it already (e.g., it is at Figure 3) The explanation/definition should also appear above (at the first mention).
690-802 (Vision). Similarly to thermoregulation, it reads as good notes from an entomology textbook, but drifts too far from the main topic of the review. Shorten it considerably, and may be expand legend to the relevant figure.
746: Trichromat insects? Please, check if the term is correct (I believe it should be “trichromatous” or “trichromate”, but not sure about it.
845 and below (Risk assessment). I am afraid that you are mixing “areas with suitable climate” with “suitable habitat”. For neither of the two butterflies, developed lands, arable fields, etc., represent habitat. Unless you plan to include land covers into your models, change the term “suitable habitat” by something else. “Climatically suitable area”, may be.
880-883. The overall assessment that the risks are relatively low may change significantly, if you considered an intersection between climatically suitable areas and suitable land covers. Please, state this here, or elsewhere where appropriate.
1027-1040. Although a nice closing paragraph, there is a statement with which I cannot agree.
this one: “Some loss of insects due to wind energy is inevitable. Ultimately, the threats to insect biodiversity due to climate change likely outweigh those presented by wind energy development. Higher temperatures projected over the next 80 years increased extinction risk for ectotherms globally in one model (Duffy et al. 2022). Temperate insects, such as those found in North America, may be the most vulnerable to climate change.” The first sentence is true, but for the rest, you yourself admit that it is predicted by “one model”. I might bring in more, including the C.D. Thomas 2004 classic, but – we all keep seeing insect losses due to habitat loss, land use change, etc., but rarely we see losses due to climate, and even the climatic effects are rather nuanced. Moreover, most of such losses are from insular regions, such as tops of middle-height isolated mountains (cf. Konvicka et al., 2021, PeerJ, 9, e12021) than from “temperate regions”. Keep in mind that latitudinal and altiudinal span, and hence variety of climates experienced, is usually quite high – and that most of the species we see around had survived all the Quaternary climatic oscillations (by dispersal mechanisms, of course).
Conclusions: Generally good text. May be, add a sentence or two on the necessity to conserve habitats and landscapes.
Martin Konvicka
Not applicable for a review.
Not applicable for a review.
Very comprehensive review, provided with an extensive record of the research published in leading journals.
The structure of the manuscript is appropriate, language is clear, correct and precise. The text is quite long, but I see opportunities to shorten it to focus more on the objectives
The hypotheses/aims section of the Introduction section needs to be completed with clearer stated hypotheses
Most of the figures well well-prepared, except some that require a more detailed description of the content
The original review linked with the case-study data and modeling of risk assessment, within the scope of the journal
Manuscript provides a number of hypotheses to investigate further. I’ve found it very useful and very timely to try to fill the gap regarding the importance of wind farms for insects
Ethical standards have been approved with appropriate permission
The methods section needs improvements to describe the field protocol more precisely.
Very novel considering the neglected topic of the impact of wind farm development on insects. High benefit to the literature.
The conclusion section well written and comprehensive.
Reviewer comments.
Very comprehensive review, provided with an extensive record of the research published in leading journals. Manuscript provides a number of hypotheses to investigate further. I’ve found it very useful and very timely to try to fill the gap regarding the importance of wind farms for insects. The structure of the manuscript is appropriate, language is clear, correct and precise. The text is quite long, but I see opportunities to shorten it to focus more on the objectives. I also see several parts that should be improved, which I will punctuate below. Detailed major and minor comments are listed and divided into manuscript sections
The literature search procedure requires a more detailed description to increase the possibility of replication of the study.
The part that confuse me the most is a case study section. The methods section for the sampling protocol should be more clearly describe. I have very blurry vision of what, when and how often you did in the field so it’s difficult to properly assess the results. What is more, the scale at which you sampled the insects is quite big and I’m lacking at least the data about the habitat/vegetation type surrounding your sampling points. Because of the many spatial processes that may play a role at a distance up to 28 km, I think you go too far with the interpretation of your case study results.
References require improvement - in some places there is a lack of uniform style, there are errors, probably generated by the citation manager.
Below I provide a comment to each section:
Abstract
Well written. Only issue is the lack of the presentation of the full scope of the article. Beside the literature review you provided also empirical data and performed risk assessment. There should be also brief information about this content.
Introduction
Generally, well written, clearly introduces all aspects of the topic. Last paragraph needs an improvement - the hypotheses/aims section needs to be completed. I see three main aims of this article: literature review, case study and risk assessment for the examples of species. Each of these parts has specific hypotheses associated with, that should be pronounced.
L64-65: You can remove the brackets around the species Latin names
L92-94: This part needs a reference
L94-98: Sounds more like the result of this review, maybe should be moved to later parts or discussion?
L98: Remove double brackets
Methods
L133-135: I think the last sentence is not necessary
L150-152: The method is not very clear, how were these words used, alone or in combination? Entries such as "insects" or "invertebrates" are very general and must have generated a large number of records. How was the selection of the articles carried out? Were works cited in retrieved articles also included, if they were in the topic?
L158: United States
L165-166: Here you write about the first season of the study: from May to July 2022. Later (L192) you mention that “Some of this data was originally reported by Dority (Dority 2019) and was reanalyzed by us for this review”. Further in lines 560-561, and line 587 you mention three studies in southeastern Wyoming in 2016, 2017, 2022. Please explain that.
L166-168: How often were these traps placed from May to July?
L170: The more valuable information would be what kind of habitats were available nearby
L174-177: Were there any hoverflies? I think this is a gap that they are often omitted while being also pollinators. Do you have any information from literature considering hoverflies?
L179: correct (Oksanen et al. 2022)
L181: correct the reference to (Wickham 2011)
L189-190: The sampling design and analysis are not clear to me. What about the rest of the sampling sites? I think some figure or map with visualization of sampling site localization to each other and turbines are necessary
L202: shoud be Lotts and Naberhaus
L205: Karger et al. 2023
L211: expand the abbreviation NREL
L226-227: no references to Robert J. Hijmans 2023a; Robert J. Hijmans 2023b on a list
Literature review
I would make more clear division of this section from methods, providing the section “results” and dividing it further to subsections.
L240 – Did you find some information about Small Wind Turbines (SWT) and their influences?
L242 – 254: Too many technical details that seem not to be so necessary to understand the interactions of insects with windmills. I would shorten it and merge it with the previous paragraph
L296: habitats
L304: Is the reference or link to this data provided?
L353: brackets are not necessary
L361: there is a double space
L383-388: this section lacks a reference
L401: remove the dos after “States”, but I suppose, the author should be U.S. Dept. of Labor
L410: use italic for the species name
L531: correct “thermorecepetion”
L612-641: I would shorten this two paragraphs removing some excessive information about morphology, keeping only the most important and maybe merging this two paragraphs
L620: correct “haver”
L686: lack of dot and double space
Results – case study
I suggest to better provide the β slope coefficient rather than t-statistic value
Figure 4a and 4b: the number of points does not correspond with the number of traps used (83?)
L463 – 464: I’m afraid that without including some habitat variable into model or putting more precision to the sampling design (but it’s extremely hard or even impossible to keep constant conditions across 28 km) this result is not very useful. I think There would be more clear differences at smaller scale, between the turbine site and immediate surrounding habitat, but also depending on the type of the habitat.
L473 – 477: I have a problem with understanding these results. What these ranges of t-statistics and p-values means? They still seem statistically insignificant (p>0.05). Figure 5 also cast doubt on the differences between sites. The elements of the figure 5 should also be more precisely described (what are these dots, for example)
L495: habitat characteristics and other variables…
L500 – 502: Why you use statement “unpublished results”? Fig 6 presents results of presented/reviewed manuscript (unless I'm wrong?). Moreover, results from figure 6 does not present significant distinctions between the species assemblages (see L483-484)
L589: I see rather decreasing trend for both, bowls and vane traps
Discussion
I think that little space has been devoted to how wind farms can potentially change the habitat and vegetation, and this further affects pollinating insects in particular.
I think, It would be good idea to place “Conclusions” section at the end, after the “Knowledge gaps”
References:
Keep the uniform convention: provide doi number or the whole link to the article. In some references there are abbreviated journal titles – check It and choose same style for all.
L1190 and 1192: abbreviated title
L1255: Expand the citation to the full title of the book. Here is the example from PeerJ guidelines: Smith PG. 2011. Behavior in ants. In: Jones HY, ed. Insect behavior in the Andes. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 101–200.
L1202: “Environ Sci Technol” is an abbreviation of Environmental Science & Technology journal. Please keep concise style through all of the reference lists (full or abbreviated titles).
L1209-1210: the correct reference is:
Crawford MS, Dority DE, Dillon ME, Tronstad LM. 2023a. Insects are attrated to white wind turbine bases: evidence from turbine mimics. Western North American Naturalist, 83(2):232-242. 10.3398/064.083.0208
L1259-1260: Farnier et al. 2014 is not referenced in the text
L1344: should be:
Wickham H. 2011. The Split-Apply-Combine Strategy for Data Analysis. Journal of Statistical Software,40: 1–29.
… and should be moved to the appropriate place at the end part of the list
L1419: abbreviated title
L1429: abbreviated title
L1451: Reference should be fixed following the example from the website:
Lotts, Kelly and Thomas Naberhaus, coordinators. 2021. Butterflies and Moths of North America. http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/ (Version MMDDYYYY).
L1521: reference should be fixed. Below is the reference generated in R:
> citation("vegan")
Oksanen J, Simpson G, Blanchet F, Kindt R, Legendre P, Minchin P, O'Hara R, Solymos P, Stevens M, Szoecs E, Wagner H, Barbour M, Bedward M, Bolker B, Borcard D, Carvalho G, Chirico M, De Caceres M, Durand S, Evangelista H, FitzJohn R, Friendly M, Furneaux B, Hannigan G, Hill M, Lahti L, McGlinn D, Ouellette M, Ribeiro Cunha E, Smith T, Stier A, Ter Braak C, Weedon J (2022). vegan: Community Ecology Package. R package version 2.6-4.
L1527-1528: abbreviated title
L1628: “Environ Manage” is an abbreviation of Environmental Management Journal.
L1685-1687: Citation need to be fixed
L1705: extend the abbreviation
The review gives an extensive overview about the current knowledge of
interactions between wind turbines and insects (literature review), supplemented with the author´s own data (case study).
The literature review relies on international peer-reviewed articles from the Web of Science database, textbooks, reports from U.S. government agencies,
and content from the Tethys Knowledge Base through keyword searches. The key words included (L145ff): "wind energy",
"wind power", "wind turbines", "wildlife mortality", "insects", "invertebrates", "insect vision",
"insect flight", "insect monitoring", and "turbine microclimate".
The aim of the literature review was to address (L111-L116):
- "how turbines change the abiotic environment"
- "how insects may be affected by these changes",
- "methods for surveying insects and what data they provide",
- "what insect orders are most vulnerable to collisions", and
- "the potential for trophic cascades at wind energy facilities".
For the case study, insects were counted and identified at one operational wind facility, one reference site, and four other
sites that were "slated for future wind energy development" (L165ff). To describe "if insect abundances and assemblages were
influenced by proximity to turbines", "bee catch (insects/hr) and bee genus richness with distance
from turbines" were measured and statistically analyzed with generalized linear models (GLMs). The
"statistical models also included wind speed, air temperature, and Julian date to account for abiotic
factors affecting insect flight and seasonality of insects" (L182ff).
Major comments:
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1. I appreciate the case study, but
1.1. it could pointed out more clearly which data is derived from their own survey and which is from the literature review.
For instance, in the abstract it is written: "We found evidence of insect attraction to turbines due to turbine location, paint color, shape, and temperature output.".
To me, it is not clear whether this is based on referenced articles from the literature review or the own results from the case study.
1.2. The hypothesis or question of the case study should be stated and elaborated in the introduction, and
1.3. evaluated in the discussion.
2. I appreciate that code and data are provided in the supplementaries. I can run all the R code lines on my computer.
2.1. However, the code seems not to be complete. It is written that terra and raster packages were used to
"analyze the data and produce the models" (L225f). In the provided file "Wind Farm Bee Script Clean.R" I could not find this analysis and models. May you provide these code as well, please?
2.2. Although I can run the provided code, I do not understand for instance, why specifically the gamma distribution was chosen, or why "all_windtemp" was devided by "2.236936". Thus,
I suggest to
2.3. comment the code with more explanations, specifically on the whole model selection process and diagnostic plots.
2.4. I would appreciate it if the code and elaborated comments (2.3.) could be rendered, for instance, to a html file (literate programming)
which is part of the supplements so that readers can follow the steps through the computational analysis more easily and link code to data and plots quickly.
3. I am not sure why bees in particular were analyzed and not other insects ("To measure if insect abundances and assemblages were influenced by proximity to turbines,
we measured differences in bee catch (insects/hr) and bee genus richness with distance from turbines using generalized linear models (GLMs).", L182ff)?
Later it is written that "insects in the orders Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera and Hemiptera may be the most vulnerable to colliding with turbine blades" (L951ff).
Based on this information from the review, wouldn't it be reasonable to study those most vulnerable first with higher priority rather than bees?
4. Figures: In general, I advise to explain the figure in more detail in order to help the readers to understand the figure without reading the whole article.
4.1. Fig 1 and 2: Maybe combine those two Figures?
4.2. Fig 2: Maybe add 'color', 'shape' and 'turbine location' as further influences of wind energy facilities on insects?
4.3. Fig 3: Could some measure of dispersion (e.g. variance, standard deviation or range, maximum height) be added to the windmill symbol to quantify the distribution of windmill height?
4.4. Fig 3: X-Axis title (group of insects, family or order?) and eventually small contours of representatives of these groups below the scientific names?
4.5. Fig 4: More information on the vane traps, statistics and underlying model, link to supplements?
4.6. Fig 5: More information on how many points are the basis for the boxplots (or alternatively rainclod plot?), statistics and underlying model, link to supplements. What does the black dot (mean)?
4.7. Fig 6: What does NMDS1 and NMDS2 mean?
4.8. Fig 7: Equals "insect catch rate" =? "bee catch rate" (Link to Line 183ff "To measure if insect abundances and assemblages were influenced by proximity to turbines,
we measured differences in bee catch (insects/hr) and bee genus richness with distance from turbines using generalized linear models (GLMs)."?
4.9. Fig 7: Why are there so many more points compared to Fig. 4? Please link to supplements and provide more inferential statistical information.
4.10. Fig 8: Maybe this plot can be removed, otherwise readers may expect similar anatomical descriptions for all the sense organs which are affected by the wind energy facilities?
Alternatively, a summary about which sense organs are impacted how by what kind of noise from wind energy facilities
(e.g. light pollution - eyes, seismic noise - ...) and links to relevant studies may help the readers to grasp the connections (noise - sense organ - relevant study).
Somehow the figure may also be integrated into Figure 2.
4.11. Fig 9: Would it be possible to illustrate which of these boxes have been touched by which study? This would be a good visual summary and outlook for the present literature review.
4.12. Fig 12: Unfortunatly, without more elaboration in the figure caption, I do not understand this graph. Could the minus and plus signs be replaced by some verbs or hints?
4.13. Fig 13: Similar to comment 4.11., Would it be possible to illustrate which of these connections have been touched by which study?
Minor comments:
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- The paragraph about wing morphology and flight muscles (line 615 - 637 ) may be too long; or should be related more often and more specific to the topic of the review.
- L1255: Does this reference belong to a section from the book "Wildlife and Wind Farms..." edited by Martin Perrow? If so,
Please complete this reference.
In summary, I am not sure whether the case study should be included into the review. If it should stay inside,
I recommend (i) more elaboration and motivation particularly in the introduction and discussion
as well as (ii) a clear distinction on what are the authors own experimental results in contrast to the review summaries and
(iii) more explanations in the supplementary scripts and figures. The figures should
have more elaborations in the captions and crosslinks to existing studies (visual summaries of the review) and the supplementaries.
see 1. Basic reporting
see 1. Basic reporting
see 1. Basic reporting
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