The Influence of Building Surroundings and Glass Cover in Bird Collisions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

 

Thank you for the opportunity to review and provide feedback on your manuscript. This research is very important, and I believe its publication will help to fill gaps in knowledge about bird-building collisions as they are occurring in South America.

 

Overall I found the manuscript very easy to read and straightforward. My comments and suggestions mainly focus on clarifying methodological details and supporting interpretation of the results. I provide recommendations for how to improve the discussion about the results to ensure consistency with recommended best practices to mitigate bird-building collisions.

 

I am annotating the specific comments with the line numbers as the appear in the draft manuscript PDF:

 

14-15: The recommendation to limit vegetation near buildings may be problematic and is generally not what subject matter experts recommend in terms of mitigating collisions at existing buildings. The reason is that vegetation around buildings can be very important in urbanized landscapes in terms of providing wildlife habitat and other benefits (e.g., shade). Recommending that vegetation be removed may exacerbate habitat loss and lead to suboptimal strategies to reduce collisions, which should involve applying visual markers on glass. I would suggest changing the recommendation from limiting vegetation near buildings, to prioritizing mitigating the risk of bird collisions at building façades where vegetation is present by installing visual markers on glass and reducing artificial light at night.

 

21: Suggest changing “directly influenced” to “predicted”. The reason is that your results do not demonstrate a direct causal relationship. It is possible that the presence of vegetation indirectly increases the risk of bird collisions (e.g., by changing the appearance of the glass that birds fly towards).

 

24: Suggest changing “probably due to the reflection of the trees in the glass” to “possibly due to the appearance of trees in reflections or scenes viewed through glass”

 

25: “If a large glass cover is associated with vegetation” is grammatically incorrect. Suggest switching to “If large expanses of glass are situated on buildings near vegetation including trees, more bird collisions will occur.”

 

26-27: “Smaller glassy areas” is imprecise language. I would suggest changing to “Thus, to reduce bird collisions, building designs should reduce the amount of glass used on building exteriors near vegetation, and ensure glass is treated with visual markers.”

 

31: Suggest replacing “several” with “many” – there are indeed more than several threats. Also, suggest replacing “glass structures” with “glass on buildings” (most structures are not made entirely from glass).

 

32: Suggest replacing “Collisions usually occur…” with “Bird collisions with glass during the daytime usually occur”. This is an important distinction because your study focuses on daytime collisions, whereas other studies have described the mechanisms and mitigation of collisions that occur during nighttime for different reasons (i.e., light pollution).

 

42: Throughout the manuscript, there is variable use of the terms “trees” and “vegetation”. I find this a bit confusing because birds are attracted to other forms of vegetation besides trees, such as vines, shrubs and wildflowers. Here, I would suggest replacing “shelter in the trees” with “shelter in the vegetation”. I would also recommend adding a sentence immediately after to define vegetation more precisely, such as: “Vegetation used in landscaping around buildings may include trees, shrubs, vines and wildflowers that attract birds. In the present study, we focus specifically on the presence of trees around buildings”. You could also explain why you focussed only on trees.

 

42-43: “If the vegetation is composed of fruit trees…” Suggest rephrasing this sentence for clearer grammar. Suggestion: “Trees that bear fruit may attract more birds and increase their local abundance, as well as their risk of colliding with glass on nearby buildings.”

 

48-49: Here, again, I would caution recommending removing vegetation around buildings as a form of collisions mitigation. You may wish to add a sentence right after to address this concern; “Eliminating fruit-bearing vegetation less than 1m from the windows is a suggested measure to reduce the risk of collisions, in addition to applying visual markers on glass. However, reducing vegetation around buildings may also compromise the quality of habitat for birds in urban areas”.

 

50: not sure if “registered” bird species is the right word to use here, unless you are referring to a specific registry. “recorded” bird species would be clearer and is more consistent with language used in checklists, like what is being referenced here.

 

51: This sentence is grammatically incorrect. Suggest breaking it up into two sentences, e.g., “In Brazil there are 1,971 recorded bird species [14]. Few studies to date have recorded bird collisions with buildings in Brazil, and as a result, there is limited information about the effects of collisions on bird populations in the region.”

 

53: I would also suggest clarifying the following sentence: “However, these studies have yet to systematically evaluate the influence of building surroundings and characteristics in bird collisions”. Suggest changing to “Previous studies carried out in Brazil have not systematically evaluated the effects of local environmental variables and architectural characteristics on bird collisions.”

 

55: This sentence reads more like a prediction, not a hypothesis. I would suggest changing this to “We predicted that the greater the number of trees…” Or, if you want to present this as a hypothesis, rewrite the sentence to reflect the relationship and direction of that relationship you are hypothesizing to exist e.g., “We hypothesized that the number of trees around buildings, the proximity of trees to the buildings, and the extent of glass on those buildings, are positively related to the risk of bird collisions”. See here: https://blog.wordvice.com/how-to-write-a-hypothesis-tips-examples/

 

60-62: You may want to specify that this was a passive observational study. Did you have a procedure in case injured birds were found? If so, you should describe it here; e.g., any live injured birds were left in place, or relocated, or admitted to a wildlife rehabilitation facility (as applicable)

 

64-71: It would be good to include a bit more descriptive information about the buildings to describe their composition. For example, indicating if the buildings are low-rise or mid-rise structures will provide some information about their height. Is it possible to include photos of the building windows in a figure or as supplemental material? You don’t need to include every window but maybe a subset from each studied building. You could also mention if the windows appear reflective, transparent or both (e.g., on line 129 you refer to corridors but it’s unclear where corridors/bridges/tunnels with glass on either side are present).

 

73-74: Should specify if the monitoring included weekends, or change to “daily”. Should also indicate if the time when buildings were checked was consistent. Rather than “313 hours of data collection” you might want to switch the description to “313 hours of survey effort”. How many people carried out each survey? (e.g., was there just one observer?) Was the same walking route used each time?

 

76: It is a bit awkward to describe the number of birds that collided as “abundance” – this term usually refers to the number of living birds in an area. Instead, I suggest changing this to “the total number of birds that collided”.

 

76: I am unclear about what you considered to be fruit trees versus regular trees. Can you provide a list of tree species with counts for each? Were all the trees bearing fruit during the study period? Was there a minimum size for a tree to be included? (e.g., would a very tiny tree count?) Was each tree counted as either a regular tree OR a fruit tree, without being counted twice?

 

78-79: “Birds were counted only until 2m from the glass windows” This is a bit vague because the distance is in three dimensions and it is not indicated how tall the buildings are (e.g., if a window is 2m above the ground, then a bird found right against the building would be 2m from it). I suggest changing this sentence to “Carcasses were included in the dataset only if they were found on the ground within 2m of where the nearest building façade met the ground.” Also, did you count any collisions where a carcass was removed/scavenged but other evidence was left behind? (e.g., remaining feathers). If so, please describe.

Table 1: Should this table distinguish between the number of trees and number of fruit trees, since these variables were considered independently by your analyses?

 

92: This should be broken into two sentences. i.e., “First we evaluated correlations among the model parameters. We found that the number of trees, the number of fruit trees…”

 

94: Is constructed the right word here? Maybe you mean “conducted”. This phrasing is a bit awkward. Suggest switching to active voice: e.g., “We used generalized linear models (GLMs) to assess whether…”

 

96: “the horizontal distance between the façade containing glass and the nearest tree”

 

96: How exactly did you measure the distance between the trees to the building/window? e.g., did you measure from the trunk, from the edge of the canopy, or something else? Did you measure using satellite imagery or a physical instrument? Please describe.

 

97: You refer to “general” linear models here, but in line 94 you say “generalized” linear models. These are different analyses – which one did you use?

 

102: “found due to the collision with the glasses” is grammatically incorrect. Suggest changing to “Our monitoring of the buildings recorded twenty-four individual dead birds spanning 15 species that were killed by colliding with glass on buildings at the UFOP Institutes.”

 

103: “most collided” is grammatically incorrect. Suggest switching to “The species that were most commonly observed to collide were the…”

 

Table 2: Under the Species column there are several rows that are formatted inconsistently with the year appearing italicized (Mimus saturninus and Thraupis sayaca) and inconsistent use of brackets (Turdus rufventris and Turdus leucomelas)

 

109: Throughout the manuscript you use the word “area” to refer to a geographic space (e.g., area around the buildings that you monitored) as well as to refer to the amount of glass on the buildings. I would suggest referring to the amount of glass on buildings as “surface area” (i.e., the amount of the surface covered by glass) and referring to the area around the buildings as the “study area”. For example, here you could say “The number of trees in the study area positively influenced…”

 

110: Is this P value correct? Its formatting is unusual. Might want to reduce it to P < 0.001 or report the actual value.

 

115: Suggest rewording to “the model was significantly different”

 

120: The word “places” is repeated. Suggest changing to “The trees probably attracted the birds near the buildings since they provide refuge and food for them”.

 

121-122: The reference to the Cleveland study is a bit abrupt. You might want to add a sentence before that says something like “Our results are consistent with previous studies that also found a positive relationship between the presence of trees near glass on buildings and the incidence of bird collisions. For example, a study carried out in Cleveland (USA) found an increase in bird collisions was related to the number of trees at a distance of less than 5m from the windows)”

 

122: Here “5 m” has a space in between, but elsewhere in the manuscript there is no space. I think either is correct but I would recommend keeping the formatting consistent.

 

123-124: Again, as in the abstract, I would recommend being very careful about recommending to remove or not plant vegetation around buildings as a strategy to reduce bird collisions, as this might affect the availability of bird habitat in the urban environment. I do not agree with the claim that it is necessary to avoid trees being planted too close to the windows for this reason, although planting trees beside buildings may be problematic for other reasons (e.g., risk of damaging the structure). Instead, I would suggest reframing this interpretation as follows: “Thus, it is necessary for designs of buildings and landscaping around those buildings to consider that trees planted close to windows may attract birds and lead to an increased risk of causing collisions”.

 

126: Not sure it is fair to say it is “impossible” for birds to distinguish. Some birds may indeed distinguish the presence of a window and avoid colliding – your study would not have detected them. It is likely that some birds that approach glass indeed avoid colliding with it (e.g., see Samuels et al., 2022 in PeerJ) Instead, I would change this to “making it difficult for birds”

 

127-128: Suggest removing “Consequently, collisions occur [24]” as this sentence fragment is redundant.

 

129: It is unclear what you mean here by “predominance of corridors”. Please elaborate.

 

129-131: This sentence is awkward and grammatically incorrect: ”The architectural characteristics of these areas are determinant in the greatest number of collisions since the more significant the glazing area available, the greater the chance of a bird collision”. I’m not exactly sure what you are trying to communicate here. Suggest rephrasing: “The architectural composition of the buildings, particularly the amount of surface area covered by glass, predicted where the most bird collisions occurred, such that larger expanses of glass were more likely to suffer a greater number of collisions.”

 

136: Enormously is probably not the right word to use here. Suggest switching to “widely”

 

137-138: I am not sure what the last sentence beginning with “Maybe this variation” means. If you are referring to the overall distribution of the tree distance variable or the small sample size for your study (total # of collisions) possibly explaining why you did not find a significant effect of tree distance, please clarify.

 

141-144: Again, I would remove the recommendation to reduce the number of trees planted around buildings. Suggest replacing this with something like “To decrease or avoid bird deaths due to window collisions, recommended strategies include reducing the size of the area on buildings covered by glass as well as prioritizing mitigation around where trees are planted around building. Mitigation methods may include covering the exterior of glass surfaces with visual markers such as decals, insect screens, films or curtains of cords without leaving gaps wider than 5cm between markers. This will help birds to perceive the windows as barriers to be avoided.” You may also wish to include a citation here to flap.org or https://www.birdcity.org/brasil/peruibe?tab=1 to refer readers to information applicable to preventing bird collisions Brazil.

 

Somewhere in your discussion section I would like to see a bit more information to summarize why this study is important. This is up to your discretion as the authors, but I will offer some suggestions as a reviewer. I think this is a valuable contribution to the scientific literature on bird-window collisions because it documented where collisions occur in an understudied region of South America, providing data on collisions involving species and building characteristics that might not be common in other regions. Because many of the continent's migratory birds spend the winter months in South America, it is important to characterize how threats like collisions with windows are impacting them throughout their ranges. This study is also notable for controlling the amount of survey effort that was involved in the data collection, which makes it possible for your dataset to be combined with results of other studies and used in broader analyses. Finally, collecting data on the incidence of collisions on a campus in Brazil may support conservation management by indicating which specific buildings are the most vulnerable to causing bird collisions, so that future interventions such as treatment of windows can be prioritized based on evidence.

 

As an additional suggestion, you may want to add a mention somewhere in your paper about how the general public can contribute data on bird collisions, such as by uploading photos to a citizen science database such as Global Bird Collision Mapper (birdmapper.org/) or iNaturalist (inaturalist.org). This may help to expand awareness of collisions occurring in other regions in South America. I would also encourage you to upload your own dataset to one of these platforms (and if you do so, refer to this in your methods section).

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I have included comments about grammar along with other suggestions about the manuscript. In general, I would recommend paying attention to consistency in terminology (e.g., trees, vegetation).

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Dear authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review and provide feedback on your manuscript. This research is very important, and I believe its publication will help to fill gaps in knowledge about bird-building collisions as they are occurring in South America.

Overall I found the manuscript very easy to read and straightforward. My comments and suggestions mainly focus on clarifying methodological details and supporting interpretation of the results. I provide recommendations for how to improve the discussion about the results to ensure consistency with recommended best practices to mitigate bird-building collisions.

Response: Dear reviewer, thank you very much for taking the time to read our manuscript and for your contributions and suggestions. They have greatly improved the quality of our manuscript, and we believe that this new version is more suitable for evaluation and publication in Birds. We have responded to all your suggestions below (in red). Thank you again.

 

I am annotating the specific comments with the line numbers as the appear in the draft manuscript PDF:

14-15: The recommendation to limit vegetation near buildings may be problematic and is generally not what subject matter experts recommend in terms of mitigating collisions at existing buildings. The reason is that vegetation around buildings can be very important in urbanized landscapes in terms of providing wildlife habitat and other benefits (e.g., shade). Recommending that vegetation be removed may exacerbate habitat loss and lead to suboptimal strategies to reduce collisions, which should involve applying visual markers on glass. I would suggest changing the recommendation from limiting vegetation near buildings, to prioritizing mitigating the risk of bird collisions at building façades where vegetation is present by installing visual markers on glass and reducing artificial light at night.

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. We agree with it and have changed this sentence in the simple summary (in red). 

 

21: Suggest changing “directly influenced” to “predicted”. The reason is that your results do not demonstrate a direct causal relationship. It is possible that the presence of vegetation indirectly increases the risk of bird collisions (e.g., by changing the appearance of the glass that birds fly towards).

Response: thank you. We changed the word as requested.

 

24: Suggest changing “probably due to the reflection of the trees in the glass” to “possibly due to the appearance of trees in reflections or scenes viewed through glass”

Response: Changed as requested.

 

25: “If a large glass cover is associated with vegetation” is grammatically incorrect. Suggest switching to “If large expanses of glass are situated on buildings near vegetation including trees, more bird collisions will occur.”

Response: thank you for this. We have switched the sentence as requested.

 

26-27: “Smaller glassy areas” is imprecise language. I would suggest changing to “Thus, to reduce bird collisions, building designs should reduce the amount of glass used on building exteriors near vegetation, and ensure glass is treated with visual markers.”

Response: thank you very much for this suggestion. It was accepted and inserted in the text.

 

31: Suggest replacing “several” with “many” – there are indeed more than several threats. Also, suggest replacing “glass structures” with “glass on buildings” (most structures are not made entirely from glass).

Response: thank you for the suggestions. They were accepted and the text was changed as suggested.

 

32: Suggest replacing “Collisions usually occur…” with “Bird collisions with glass during the daytime usually occur”. This is an important distinction because your study focuses on daytime collisions, whereas other studies have described the mechanisms and mitigation of collisions that occur during nighttime for different reasons (i.e., light pollution).

Response: Changed as suggested. Thank you.

 

42: Throughout the manuscript, there is variable use of the terms “trees” and “vegetation”. I find this a bit confusing because birds are attracted to other forms of vegetation besides trees, such as vines, shrubs and wildflowers. Here, I would suggest replacing “shelter in the trees” with “shelter in the vegetation”. I would also recommend adding a sentence immediately after to define vegetation more precisely, such as: “Vegetation used in landscaping around buildings may include trees, shrubs, vines and wildflowers that attract birds. In the present study, we focus specifically on the presence of trees around buildings”. You could also explain why you focused only on trees.

Response: thank you very much for this suggestion. We changed the sentence, adding the explanation of why we choose only trees. Regarding the terms ‘trees’ and ‘vegetation’, we updated the terms to avoid this problem in all the sentences where it was relevant.

 

42-43: “If the vegetation is composed of fruit trees…” Suggest rephrasing this sentence for clearer grammar. Suggestion: “Trees that bear fruit may attract more birds and increase their local abundance, as well as their risk of colliding with glass on nearby buildings.”

Response: Changed as suggested.

 

48-49: Here, again, I would caution recommending removing vegetation around buildings as a form of collisions mitigation. You may wish to add a sentence right after to address this concern; “Eliminating fruit-bearing vegetation less than 1m from the windows is a suggested measure to reduce the risk of collisions, in addition to applying visual markers on glass. However, reducing vegetation around buildings may also compromise the quality of habitat for birds in urban areas”.

Response: Yes, we agreed. We have changed the sentence as suggested ans inserted references about this topic.

 

50: not sure if “registered” bird species is the right word to use here, unless you are referring to a specific registry. “recorded” bird species would be clearer and is more consistent with language used in checklists, like what is being referenced here.

Response: Changed as suggested.

 

51: This sentence is grammatically incorrect. Suggest breaking it up into two sentences, e.g., “In Brazil there are 1,971 recorded bird species [14]. Few studies to date have recorded bird collisions with buildings in Brazil, and as a result, there is limited information about the effects of collisions on bird populations in the region.”

Response: Changed as suggested.

 

53: I would also suggest clarifying the following sentence: “However, these studies have yet to systematically evaluate the influence of building surroundings and characteristics in bird collisions”. Suggest changing to “Previous studies carried out in Brazil have not systematically evaluated the effects of local environmental variables and architectural characteristics on bird collisions.”

Response: Changed as suggested. Thank you.

 

55: This sentence reads more like a prediction, not a hypothesis. I would suggest changing this to “We predicted that the greater the number of trees…” Or, if you want to present this as a hypothesis, rewrite the sentence to reflect the relationship and direction of that relationship you are hypothesizing to exist e.g., “We hypothesized that the number of trees around buildings, the proximity of trees to the buildings, and the extent of glass on those buildings, are positively related to the risk of bird collisions”. See here: https://blog.wordvice.com/how-to-write-a-hypothesis-tips-examples/

Response: Thank you. We changed to “We predicted that...”.

 

60-62: You may want to specify that this was a passive observational study. Did you have a procedure in case injured birds were found? If so, you should describe it here; e.g., any live injured birds were left in place, or relocated, or admitted to a wildlife rehabilitation facility (as applicable)

Response: This comment is very interesting, and we agree with it. We've inserted a sentence in the text explaining this. We didn't find any injured birds in the experiment, so no rescue action was necessary.

 

64-71: It would be good to include a bit more descriptive information about the buildings to describe their composition. For example, indicating if the buildings are low-rise or mid-rise structures will provide some information about their height. Is it possible to include photos of the building windows in a figure or as supplemental material? You don’t need to include every window but maybe a subset from each studied building. You could also mention if the windows appear reflective, transparent or both (e.g., on line 129 you refer to corridors but it’s unclear where corridors/bridges/tunnels with glass on either side are present).

Response: thank you for this suggestion. We inserted more details and photos of the buildings.

 

73-74: Should specify if the monitoring included weekends, or change to “daily”. Should also indicate if the time when buildings were checked was consistent. Rather than “313 hours of data collection” you might want to switch the description to “313 hours of survey effort”. How many people carried out each survey? (e.g., was there just one observer?) Was the same walking route used each time?

Response: We inserted these details in the text. There were two researchers each time, they walked the same route and sampled weekends.

 

76: It is a bit awkward to describe the number of birds that collided as “abundance” – this term usually refers to the number of living birds in an area. Instead, I suggest changing this to “the total number of birds that collided”.

Response: thank you for the suggestion. The term was changed as suggested.

 

76: I am unclear about what you considered to be fruit trees versus regular trees. Can you provide a list of tree species with counts for each? Were all the trees bearing fruit during the study period? Was there a minimum size for a tree to be included? (e.g., would a very tiny tree count?) Was each tree counted as either a regular tree OR a fruit tree, without being counted twice?

Response: The question is pertinent, and we thank you for the suggestion to explain this part better. We count all the trees within 50m of the windows. All the trees were counted, regardless of their size (most of them were already large trees, but some smaller trees were also counted; see the canopies in figure 1). We don't have the identification of the tree species, so we couldn't insert a table with the species and their number. All trees were counted for a total number of trees in the studied area and then a separate count for only fruiting trees was included.

 

78-79: “Birds were counted only until 2m from the glass windows” This is a bit vague because the distance is in three dimensions and it is not indicated how tall the buildings are (e.g., if a window is 2m above the ground, then a bird found right against the building would be 2m from it). I suggest changing this sentence to “Carcasses were included in the dataset only if they were found on the ground within 2m of where the nearest building façade met the ground.” Also, did you count any collisions where a carcass was removed/scavenged but other evidence was left behind? (e.g., remaining feathers). If so, please describe.

Response: thank you. Information included and sentence changed as suggested.

 

Table 1: Should this table distinguish between the number of trees and number of fruit trees, since these variables were considered independently by your analyses?

Response: We've kept table 1 as it is because, as described above, the trees with fruit were the same as those without. How they were included in the analysis varied depending on the time of sampling. If the tree had been bearing fruit for a month, it was classified and analysed as a fruiting tree. If it was fruitless the following month, it was counted as a tree only. So it's best to just state the distances of the trees on this table, as we did.

 

92: This should be broken into two sentences. i.e., “First we evaluated correlations among the model parameters. We found that the number of trees, the number of fruit trees…”

Response: thank you. We reformulated the sentence as suggested.

 

94: Is constructed the right word here? Maybe you mean “conducted”. This phrasing is a bit awkward. Suggest switching to active voice: e.g., “We used generalized linear models (GLMs) to assess whether…”

Response: Changed as suggested.

 

96: “the horizontal distance between the façade containing glass and the nearest tree”

Response: Changed as suggested.

 

96: How exactly did you measure the distance between the trees to the building/window? e.g., did you measure from the trunk, from the edge of the canopy, or something else? Did you measure using satellite imagery or a physical instrument? Please describe.

Response: We measured using a tape measure from the trunk to the window, in a straight line. We inserted this information into the text.

 

97: You refer to “general” linear models here, but in line 94 you say “generalized” linear models. These are different analyses – which one did you use?

Response: sorry for this mistake. The correct is generalized. We corrected this on the text. 

 

102: “found due to the collision with the glasses” is grammatically incorrect. Suggest changing to “Our monitoring of the buildings recorded twenty-four individual dead birds spanning 15 species that were killed by colliding with glass on buildings at the UFOP Institutes.”

Response: thank you again for your suggestion. We have changed the text as suggested.

 

103: “most collided” is grammatically incorrect. Suggest switching to “The species that were most commonly observed to collide were the…”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Table 2: Under the Species column there are several rows that are formatted inconsistently with the year appearing italicized (Mimus saturninus and Thraupis sayaca) and inconsistent use of brackets (Turdus rufventris and Turdus leucomelas)

Response: Thank you for your comment. The italicized authors and years are errors in the table formatting and have already been corrected. The question of whether the authors are in parentheses is not an error. It has a taxonomical meaning. Names in parentheses indicate that the genus has been changed after revisions, while names without parentheses indicate that the genus name has remained the same since the species was described. Therefore, it has been retained. 

 

109: Throughout the manuscript you use the word “area” to refer to a geographic space (e.g., area around the buildings that you monitored) as well as to refer to the amount of glass on the buildings. I would suggest referring to the amount of glass on buildings as “surface area” (i.e., the amount of the surface covered by glass) and referring to the area around the buildings as the “study area”. For example, here you could say “The number of trees in the study area positively influenced…”

Response: thank you. We have checked the manuscript and changed the terms as suggested.

 

110: Is this P value correct? Its formatting is unusual. Might want to reduce it to P < 0.001 or report the actual value.

Response: Yes, P-values are correct. We have changed it as you suggested.

 

115: Suggest rewording to “the model was significantly different”

Response: Accepted and changed.

 

120: The word “places” is repeated. Suggest changing to “The trees probably attracted the birds near the buildings since they provide refuge and food for them”.

Response: Thank you. Changed as suggested.

 

121-122: The reference to the Cleveland study is a bit abrupt. You might want to add a sentence before that says something like “Our results are consistent with previous studies that also found a positive relationship between the presence of trees near glass on buildings and the incidence of bird collisions. For example, a study carried out in Cleveland (USA) found an increase in bird collisions was related to the number of trees at a distance of less than 5m from the windows)”

Response: Sentence modified as suggested.

 

122: Here “5 m” has a space in between, but elsewhere in the manuscript there is no space. I think either is correct but I would recommend keeping the formatting consistent.

Response: you are right. We deleted the space to keep consistence.

 

123-124: Again, as in the abstract, I would recommend being very careful about recommending to remove or not plant vegetation around buildings as a strategy to reduce bird collisions, as this might affect the availability of bird habitat in the urban environment. I do not agree with the claim that it is necessary to avoid trees being planted too close to the windows for this reason, although planting trees beside buildings may be problematic for other reasons (e.g., risk of damaging the structure). Instead, I would suggest reframing this interpretation as follows: “Thus, it is necessary for designs of buildings and landscaping around those buildings to consider that trees planted close to windows may attract birds and lead to an increased risk of causing collisions”.

Response: Thanks again for the suggestion. We agree with you and have removed that part as suggested. With the changes suggested by the reviewers and editor, we believe that this connotation has been removed from the text and the suggestions for avoiding collisions more centered on other issues, such as making the glass visible to birds.

 

126: Not sure it is fair to say it is “impossible” for birds to distinguish. Some birds may indeed distinguish the presence of a window and avoid colliding – your study would not have detected them. It is likely that some birds that approach glass indeed avoid colliding with it (e.g., see Samuels et al., 2022 in PeerJ) Instead, I would change this to “making it difficult for birds”

Response: we have replaced “impossible” by “difficult” and cited Samuels et al 2022.

 

127-128: Suggest removing “Consequently, collisions occur [24]” as this sentence fragment is redundant.

Response: Deleted.

 

129: It is unclear what you mean here by “predominance of corridors”. Please elaborate.

Response: We just wanted to say that the areas with the most glazing were the ones where we recorded the highest number of bird collisions, such as the areas with corridors with windows at the ICEB. We made the sentence simpler, but with the same idea being conveyed.

 

129-131: This sentence is awkward and grammatically incorrect: ”The architectural characteristics of these areas are determinant in the greatest number of collisions since the more significant the glazing area available, the greater the chance of a bird collision”. I’m not exactly sure what you are trying to communicate here. Suggest rephrasing: “The architectural composition of the buildings, particularly the amount of surface area covered by glass, predicted where the most bird collisions occurred, such that larger expanses of glass were more likely to suffer a greater number of collisions.”

Response: Thank you very much for this suggestion. This sentence was changed as suggested.

 

136: Enormously is probably not the right word to use here. Suggest switching to “widely”

Response: Changed

 

137-138: I am not sure what the last sentence beginning with “Maybe this variation” means. If you are referring to the overall distribution of the tree distance variable or the small sample size for your study (total # of collisions) possibly explaining why you did not find a significant effect of tree distance, please clarify.

Response: We rephrased the last sentence to clarify the idea.

 

141-144: Again, I would remove the recommendation to reduce the number of trees planted around buildings. Suggest replacing this with something like “To decrease or avoid bird deaths due to window collisions, recommended strategies include reducing the size of the area on buildings covered by glass as well as prioritizing mitigation around where trees are planted around building. Mitigation methods may include covering the exterior of glass surfaces with visual markers such as decals, insect screens, films or curtains of cords without leaving gaps wider than 5cm between markers. This will help birds to perceive the windows as barriers to be avoided.” You may also wish to include a citation here to flap.org or https://www.birdcity.org/brasil/peruibe?tab=1 to refer readers to information applicable to preventing bird collisions Brazil.

Response: The sentence was changed, and a citation was added (https://www.savebrasil.org.br/acidente-com-aves). We prefer to mention SAVE Brasil because it is a reputable NGO in Brazil, which has relevant information on its website about how to avoid bird collisions with glass and links to other sources of information. Thank you.

 

Somewhere in your discussion section I would like to see a bit more information to summarize why this study is important. This is up to your discretion as the authors, but I will offer some suggestions as a reviewer. I think this is a valuable contribution to the scientific literature on bird-window collisions because it documented where collisions occur in an understudied region of South America, providing data on collisions involving species and building characteristics that might not be common in other regions. Because many of the continent's migratory birds spend the winter months in South America, it is important to characterize how threats like collisions with windows are impacting them throughout their ranges. This study is also notable for controlling the amount of survey effort that was involved in the data collection, which makes it possible for your dataset to be combined with results of other studies and used in broader analyses. Finally, collecting data on the incidence of collisions on a campus in Brazil may support conservation management by indicating which specific buildings are the most vulnerable to causing bird collisions, so that future interventions such as treatment of windows can be prioritized based on evidence.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We've included this paragraph as the last in the discussion. Your suggestions have been accepted in full and modified slightly.

 

As an additional suggestion, you may want to add a mention somewhere in your paper about how the general public can contribute data on bird collisions, such as by uploading photos to a citizen science database such as Global Bird Collision Mapper (birdmapper.org/) or iNaturalist (inaturalist.org). This may help to expand awareness of collisions occurring in other regions in South America. I would also encourage you to upload your own dataset to one of these platforms (and if you do so, refer to this in your methods section).

Response: thank you for this suggestion. It was inserted as the last sentence of the discussion. Our data is already in the Mendeley Data Repository, but we will also insert it on the birdmapper soon.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of article ‘The influence of building surroundings and glass cover in bird collisions’

This study assessed how landscape features influenced bird-window collisions during a one-year study at a Brazilian university campus. The authors found that the number of trees and area of glass was associated with mortality from window collisions. This study is important in that it adds to a growing body of research regarding avian window collision risk. It provides additional evidence for how building surroundings influence collision risk, which is important for mitigating risk. Overall, the study design is laid out clearly but the authors should provide some additional information in the methods section for how trees were counted and whether fruit trees were included in total number of trees separately. Throughout the paper, the authors should not describe the results in terms of causation but rather association. For example, using words like suggests rather than concluding. It would be nice to see some figures in the results section instead of just summary statistics. Overall, I think that with some additional information and clarification in the methods section and a bit more content in the discussion section, this paper will be a valuable contribution to avian window-collision research.

 

Specific Suggestions

Ln 11: change the word ‘like’ to ‘including’

Ln 20: should state what year the study was done

Ln 22: Instead of saying ‘it can be concluded’ say something more like ‘This suggests that’

Ln 26: this should be past tense, more bird collisions occurred

Ln 40: instead of ‘is related to’ use ‘has been’

Ln 47: I am not sure if the term ‘glazing’ is commonly used. I would consider using another word or defining what you mean by glazing before its first use.

Ln 54: If you are counting the number of trees, I would stick to using that instead of presence. That word indicated if they were present or not, not a count.

Ln 65: You should put in parentheses the number of buildings (n = 8)

Ln 73: Did you standardize the time of day that these sampling areas were visited? For example, were they all visited in the morning? Should clarify if the timing of the visits were standardized. Scavenging of carcasses can occur, so early visits are recommended.

Ln 74: Were fruit trees counted separately from the other trees or were all trees counted for a total number of trees in the area and then a separate count for only fruit trees included? This is important, because if an area had only fruit trees and they were counted separately from other trees, the total number of trees in the area would be zero, which would not be true.

Ln 92-93: You state that the variables included in the study were not correlated. I am guessing some may have been correlated to some degree. Did you have a threshold value above which you considered variables correlated or not? 0.50?

Ln 98: Often with count data, there are a large number of zeros. How did you determine that a Gaussian distribution was appropriate? And not a Poisson or zero-inflated Poisson or negative binomial? You should state how you determined Gaussian was the best fit.

Ln 104: should put the common name in front of Turdus rufiventris, to be consistent with the other species listed.

Ln 109: Consider using the word associated instead of influenced

Discussion: You should describe whether the species with the highest mortality rates had any common traits, or why you think they may have collided more frequently than other species, is it due to their overall abundance in the area or other life-history traits.

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall, the study was easy to read and the quality of written English was high. There are a few places that could improve but nothing significant.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Review of article ‘The influence of building surroundings and glass cover in bird collisions’

This study assessed how landscape features influenced bird-window collisions during a one-year study at a Brazilian university campus. The authors found that the number of trees and area of glass was associated with mortality from window collisions. This study is important in that it adds to a growing body of research regarding avian window collision risk. It provides additional evidence for how building surroundings influence collision risk, which is important for mitigating risk. Overall, the study design is laid out clearly but the authors should provide some additional information in the methods section for how trees were counted and whether fruit trees were included in total number of trees separately. Throughout the paper, the authors should not describe the results in terms of causation but rather association. For example, using words like suggests rather than concluding. It would be nice to see some figures in the results section instead of just summary statistics. Overall, I think that with some additional information and clarification in the methods section and a bit more content in the discussion section, this paper will be a valuable contribution to avian window-collision research.

Response: Thank you very much for your positive feedback. The issues raised by your review were quite like those raised by reviewer one. For all your suggestions, we have inserted answers below. We hope that the manuscript is now more suitable for publication in Birds. 

Specific Suggestions

Ln 11: change the word ‘like’ to ‘including’

Response: done

Ln 20: should state what year the study was done

Response: inserted

Ln 22: Instead of saying ‘it can be concluded’ say something more like ‘This suggests that’

Response: done

Ln 26: this should be past tense, more bird collisions occurred

Response: this part was modified following the suggestions of reviewer 1. Thus, this suggestion is no longer valid. Please, verify the new sentence and see if it is better now.

Ln 40: instead of ‘is related to’ use ‘has been’

Response: done

Ln 47: I am not sure if the term ‘glazing’ is commonly used. I would consider using another word or defining what you mean by glazing before its first use.

Response: Glazing refers to the glass components or windows installed in buildings. In the context of architecture, it often refers to the process or materials used in glass installation, including the glass panels themselves. We inserted this in the text. 

Ln 54: If you are counting the number of trees, I would stick to using that instead of presence. That word indicated if they were present or not, not a count.

Response: Good suggestion. Accepted. “Presence” changed by “Number”.

Ln 65: You should put in parentheses the number of buildings (n = 8)

Response: done

Ln 73: Did you standardize the time of day that these sampling areas were visited? For example, were they all visited in the morning? Should clarify if the timing of the visits were standardized. Scavenging of carcasses can occur, so early visits are recommended.

Response: Yes, sampling was carried out in the morning (7:00-8:00 am) and in the afternoon (1:00-2:00 pm). This information was inserted in the text.

Ln 74: Were fruit trees counted separately from the other trees or were all trees counted for a total number of trees in the area and then a separate count for only fruit trees included? This is important, because if an area had only fruit trees and they were counted separately from other trees, the total number of trees in the area would be zero, which would not be true.

Response: Thank you for this question. All trees were counted for the total number of trees in the area and then a separate count for only fruiting trees was included. We inserted this information in the text.

Ln 92-93: You state that the variables included in the study were not correlated. I am guessing some may have been correlated to some degree. Did you have a threshold value above which you considered variables correlated or not? 0.50?

Response: We used a threshold of > 0.70 for a strong correlation (Ratner, 2009). Thus, we only had weak or moderate correlations, as you mentioned. We inserted this sentence on the text.

 

	arvore	arvores_com_fruto	Dist_arvore_mais_proxima	area_do_vidro
arvore	1	0.48890477	-0.1361135	-0.24728719
arvores_com_fruto	0.4889048	1	-0.1981646	-0.02152175
Dist_arvore_mais_proxima	-0.1361135	-0.19816459	1	-0.67220611
area_do_vidro	-0.2472872	-0.02152175	-0.6722061	1

 

 

Ln 98: Often with count data, there are a large number of zeros. How did you determine that a Gaussian distribution was appropriate? And not a Poisson or zero-inflated Poisson or negative binomial? You should state how you determined Gaussian was the best fit.

Response: Thank you for your question. The error distribution was tested in R to see which fitted best, and the result was Gaussian.

[1] "AIC de cada modelo:"

> print(aic_values)

    Gaussian      Poisson Neg_Binomial          ZIP         ZINB

  -1099.8120     226.4967     227.9805     228.0090     229.9806

> # Selecionar o modelo com menor AIC

> best_model <- which.min(aic_values)

> cat("\nO melhor modelo de acordo com o AIC é:", names(best_model), "\n")

 

O melhor modelo de acordo com o AIC é: Gaussian

Ln 104: should put the common name in front of Turdus rufiventris, to be consistent with the other species listed.

Response: done

Ln 109: Consider using the word associated instead of influenced

Response: changed as suggested.

Discussion: You should describe whether the species with the highest mortality rates had any common traits, or why you think they may have collided more frequently than other species, is it due to their overall abundance in the area or other life-history traits.

Response: thank you for your suggestion. We inserted a paragraph about this in the discussion section (in red).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for incorporating these revisions. The manuscript is much clearer now. I have a few additional recommendations based on the changes that were made since my previous review.

Line 36 - Suggest replacing “the countryside” with “rural areas” which is more inclusive of small settlements such as villages and towns

 

Line 38 - Suggest replacing “an ultraviolet coating over the glasses” with “a pattern of visual markers on the glass”. The reason is that ultraviolet coatings (which come in many types) may not be effective in all cases and their use is controversial. Visual markers on glass is a more general category that can include ultraviolet technologies as well as others.

 

Line 44 - Suggest replacing “be decisive in” with “predict the risk of”

 

Line 45 - This sentence seems redundant (the segments before and after the comma in the middle are saying the same thing) and there is overlap with the previous sentence on lines 42-44 which also points to the relationship between the surface area of glass and the risk of bird collisions. Suggest condensing this information to make it more concise.

 

Line 76 - A revision to the previous version added n = 8 but it is unclear what this represents. The reader may interpret n as meaning the size of your sample, but you have not yet indicated what or how you sampled. For instance, the n could be the number of buildings, or the number of building façades, or the number of windows, or the number of birds. I suggest removing n = 8 here and adding a note to line 75 instead, such as “in eight buildings of the Institute…”

 

Lines 78 - 79 - It is unclear what is meant by “first building” “second and third buildings”. Is this relevant to interpreting Figure 1, or do you mean to sort buildings in to three categories? If not, I would suggest removing these, e.g.,  “The Institute of Exact and Biological Sciences buildings are low-rise (with one floor) or mid-rise (with two and three floors) buildings.” 

 

Line 86 - Suggest replacing “many glasses” with “many glass surfaces” (glasses may be misinterpreted by English readers as representing glass types, or spectacles for vision correction or drinking vessels). You may also want to change the word “reported” to “observed” since no reports are referenced.

 

Line 101-102 - It might be good to add a sentence here explaining how you measured the window surface area (I assume similarly using a tape measure, or based photographic analysis)

 

Line 144 - Missing a “was” in “in the studied area was positively associated with” 

 

Line 154 - Suggest adding “such that” after the the comma as follows “…according to the number of trees in the studied area, such that the greater the number of trees”

 

Line 165-167 - Since you are referring to the overall distributions of your explanatory variables, it might be worthwhile to produce plots showing these distributions that could be included in the supplemental material for the manuscript. This is optional, but it could make it easier for the reader to interpret your results.

 

Line 169 - “for birds” is repeated

 

Line 170 - suggest removing the word “natural” because birds may also struggle to distinguish artificial environments from reflections in urban centres

 

Lines 170-172 - Suggest removing this sentence, as it is redundant with the sentence that follows: “Also, places with the most significant number of bird collisions were those areas with a greater glazing area.” 

 

Lines 181-198 - This paragraph provides a lot of good information but I believe it is too long and should be broken up into smaller chunks for easier reading. Some of the language could be adjusted to make it more specific. I would suggest the following: 

 

“In the group of window screens, recommended actions involve applying materials on the windows that allow birds to perceive the presence of a physical barrier and avoid it. Examples include installing curtains inside the glass and keeping them closed (suitable where glass appears transparent from outside; this method is not effective where glass is reflective). Installing materials on the outside surface of windows can help reduce their transparency and reflectivity. Stickers or decals may be applied on the windows to form a pattern, such as straight lines separated by 5 cm gaps vertically or horizontally, or points glued in parallel forming an array. However, a single adhesive is insufficient; applications of any decals or stickers, such as silhouettes of predators, need to cover the entire glass surface without leaving gaps [12]. The same apples to applications of paint on glass. Finally, when windows are replaced during a rennovation, it is possible to exchange the glass for alternatives with patterns embedded, such as sandblasted glass. In the group of window barriers, recommended actions focus on placing structures in front of the windows to prevent birds from colliding directly with the glass. Installing 2.5 x 20 cm nylon nets on the outside of the windows, 5 cm from the glass and installing mosquito nets or similar meshes on the outside of the windows are examples of this type of solution. In the group of changes in the surroundings, the actions are focused on modifying the environment near the windows to limit the attraction of birds. Eliminating fruit plants near the windows and placing bird feeders less than 1m from the windows, are suggested measures in this group [13]. Overall, the effectiveness of each of these methods for preventing bird collisions can be affected by factors that are specific to each window, and therefore solutions should be considered a case-by-case basis [3,35].”

 

Line 202 - Suggest splitting the sentence on 199-202 by adding a period after (Swallow-tailed hummingbird) and starting a new sentence. e.g., “…with one being nectarivorous (Swallow-tailed Hummingbird). These birds are small to medium (15-28 cm in length) and include species that are solitary as well as flocking and frequently observed in urban areas.”

 

Line 203- suggest change “indicate” to “suggest”

 

Line 205 - suggest changing “Some hypotheses” to “Some possible interpretations”

 

Line 208 - suggest changing “All these hypotheses need to be investigated in future studies” to be more specific: “Relationships between the composition of vegetation, effects on the behaviour of different bird species, and vulnerability to collisions with glass are an important topic for future research.”

 

Line 211 - Suggest changing “were” to “have been”

 

Line 211 - Suggest changing “more and more” to “increasing”

 

Line 213 - Suggest changing “evaluated in Brazil” to “considerate of collisions in Brazil”

 

Line 214 - Suggest removing “development of”

 

 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The writing is much improved compared to the previous version. Please see my comments for suggestions of where specific language can be changed to make the text more specific and easier to read.

Author Response

Thank you for incorporating these revisions. The manuscript is much clearer now. I have a few additional recommendations based on the changes that were made since my previous review.

Response: Once again, we would like to thank you very much for your review, which was so rich in detail and helped us enormously in improving the text. Rare are the reviews that add as much as yours. Thank you very much.

 

Line 36 - Suggest replacing “the countryside” with “rural areas” which is more inclusive of small settlements such as villages and towns

Response: replaced.

 

Line 38 - Suggest replacing “an ultraviolet coating over the glasses” with “a pattern of visual markers on the glass”. The reason is that ultraviolet coatings (which come in many types) may not be effective in all cases and their use is controversial. Visual markers on glass is a more general category that can include ultraviolet technologies as well as others.

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 44 - Suggest replacing “be decisive in” with “predict the risk of”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 45 - This sentence seems redundant (the segments before and after the comma in the middle are saying the same thing) and there is overlap with the previous sentence on lines 42-44 which also points to the relationship between the surface area of glass and the risk of bird collisions. Suggest condensing this information to make it more concise.

Response: thank you for suggestion. We condensed the information as suggested.

 

Line 76 - A revision to the previous version added n = 8 but it is unclear what this represents. The reader may interpret n as meaning the size of your sample, but you have not yet indicated what or how you sampled. For instance, the n could be the number of buildings, or the number of building façades, or the number of windows, or the number of birds. I suggest removing n = 8 here and adding a note to line 75 instead, such as “in eight buildings of the Institute…”

Response: We inserted N=8 buildings, as suggested by the editor.

 

Lines 78 - 79 - It is unclear what is meant by “first building” “second and third buildings”. Is this relevant to interpreting Figure 1, or do you mean to sort buildings in to three categories? If not, I would suggest removing these, e.g.,  “The Institute of Exact and Biological Sciences buildings are low-rise (with one floor) or mid-rise (with two and three floors) buildings.” 

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 86 - Suggest replacing “many glasses” with “many glass surfaces” (glasses may be misinterpreted by English readers as representing glass types, or spectacles for vision correction or drinking vessels). You may also want to change the word “reported” to “observed” since no reports are referenced.

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 101-102 - It might be good to add a sentence here explaining how you measured the window surface area (I assume similarly using a tape measure, or based photographic analysis)

Response: you are correct. Information inserted.

 

Line 144 - Missing a “was” in “in the studied area was positively associated with” 

Response: sorry for this mistake. The word was inserted in the phrase.

 

Line 154 - Suggest adding “such that” after the the comma as follows “…according to the number of trees in the studied area, such that the greater the number of trees”

Response: inserted as requested.

 

Line 165-167 - Since you are referring to the overall distributions of your explanatory variables, it might be worthwhile to produce plots showing these distributions that could be included in the supplemental material for the manuscript. This is optional, but it could make it easier for the reader to interpret your results.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We made the histogram of the distribution of the distance of the nearest trees and we don't think it looks good enough to show as supplementary material (see below). So, we appreciate the suggestion but decided not to make it available.

 

 

Line 169 - “for birds” is repeated

Response: sorry for the typo. It has now been corrected.

 

Line 170 - suggest removing the word “natural” because birds may also struggle to distinguish artificial environments from reflections in urban centres

Response: deleted as suggested.

 

Lines 170-172 - Suggest removing this sentence, as it is redundant with the sentence that follows: “Also, places with the most significant number of bird collisions were those areas with a greater glazing area.” 

Response: deleted as suggested.

 

Lines 181-198 - This paragraph provides a lot of good information but I believe it is too long and should be broken up into smaller chunks for easier reading. Some of the language could be adjusted to make it more specific. I would suggest the following: 

 

“In the group of window screens, recommended actions involve applying materials on the windows that allow birds to perceive the presence of a physical barrier and avoid it. Examples include installing curtains inside the glass and keeping them closed (suitable where glass appears transparent from outside; this method is not effective where glass is reflective). Installing materials on the outside surface of windows can help reduce their transparency and reflectivity. Stickers or decals may be applied on the windows to form a pattern, such as straight lines separated by 5 cm gaps vertically or horizontally, or points glued in parallel forming an array. However, a single adhesive is insufficient; applications of any decals or stickers, such as silhouettes of predators, need to cover the entire glass surface without leaving gaps [12]. The same apples to applications of paint on glass. Finally, when windows are replaced during a rennovation, it is possible to exchange the glass for alternatives with patterns embedded, such as sandblasted glass. In the group of window barriers, recommended actions focus on placing structures in front of the windows to prevent birds from colliding directly with the glass. Installing 2.5 x 20 cm nylon nets on the outside of the windows, 5 cm from the glass and installing mosquito nets or similar meshes on the outside of the windows are examples of this type of solution. In the group of changes in the surroundings, the actions are focused on modifying the environment near the windows to limit the attraction of birds. Eliminating fruit plants near the windows and placing bird feeders less than 1m from the windows, are suggested measures in this group [13]. Overall, the effectiveness of each of these methods for preventing bird collisions can be affected by factors that are specific to each window, and therefore solutions should be considered a case-by-case basis [3,35].”

Response: thank you for this suggestion. Accepted and inserted in the text.

 

Line 202 - Suggest splitting the sentence on 199-202 by adding a period after (Swallow-tailed hummingbird) and starting a new sentence. e.g., “…with one being nectarivorous (Swallow-tailed Hummingbird). These birds are small to medium (15-28 cm in length) and include species that are solitary as well as flocking and frequently observed in urban areas.”

Response: done.

 

Line 203- suggest change “indicate” to “suggest”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 205 - suggest changing “Some hypotheses” to “Some possible interpretations”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 208 - suggest changing “All these hypotheses need to be investigated in future studies” to be more specific: “Relationships between the composition of vegetation, effects on the behaviour of different bird species, and vulnerability to collisions with glass are an important topic for future research.”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 211 - Suggest changing “were” to “have been”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 211 - Suggest changing “more and more” to “increasing”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 213 - Suggest changing “evaluated in Brazil” to “considerate of collisions in Brazil”

Response: changed as suggested.

 

Line 214 - Suggest removing “development of”

Response: removed as suggested.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf