PREreview of Behavioral plasticity allows ungulates to balance risk and reward following megafire

Overall summary:

This work seeks to study the movement behavior of black-tailed deer immediately following a megafire, to understand whether ungulate species are able to adjust to the immediate effects of megafires - specifically how deer alter habitat selection and behavioral decisions adjusting to a novel landscape. The authors use hourly GPS tracking data from doe over the period of a year and fit data from specific time periods to Resource Selection Functions and Hidden Markov Movement models. The authors claim that this work shows evidence of adaptive capacity, with deer initially avoiding severely burned areas but later selecting these areas for enhanced foraging. The authors suggest that this species, and by extension other ungulates, can navigate altered can navigate altered environments, with implications for understanding broader resilience.

This manuscript has a clear premise and generally articulates points well and was overall easy to follow, with the author’s line of argument being clear. It could benefit from some expansion of certain parts, e.g. why the models used were selected in particular (lines 101-5); how the predictions in lines 107-116 fit into the design of the models/testing the hypothesis; how far this work applies to other ungulate species/should be restricted to black-tailed deer in this particular ecological context; etc. There are also some trivial errors in description of data which I have detailed below. Overall, however, the data generated align with the points the authors are making and agree with their argument.

Major Comments:

How many deer were used to provide data for analysis? In line 99, 24 deer are mentioned, but in line 140, it is 16; and in lines 157-8, there is an implication that data from 10 deer were used. A more clear description of the number of deer providing data, and how many individual deer provided data across multiple, or all, seasons described is necessary to establish what data is actually being collected and assessed in this work. A related point: in line 150-1, the authors state that a minimum of 500 recordings were needed for assessment - how many deer were excluded, if any?

The authors suggest that this work could apply to other ungulates, but it’s not clear which, and where. It could be helpful to provide greater clarity about which kinds of species and habitats would be worthy of such a comparison, and which might provide interesting contrasts, to support future study. There is a nod to this point at the end of the discussion, in lines 446-450 where the authors discuss potential differences that might be expected with oak woodland savannas. How far this work extends to other ungulate species in other contexts, and not just black-tailed deer in the California setting, would be helpful for the authors to expand upon.

Could the authors comment in more detail about any background levels of changes in behavior in deer, in times without fire? Or in times with more “normal” fire patterns? In order to make the claims made in this manuscript, it seems necessary to discuss what any “regular” behavior in the absence of megafires may be, in order to make this comparison. For example, does other work show an otherwise consistent distribution of behaviors, especially when comparing different seasons? Particularly putting this work into context in the discussion with reference to the literature cited on lines 72-79 and 89 would be helpful, in a similar fashion to the comments the authors make in the discussion with reference to the magnet effect.

Minor Comments:

I was not clear on the rationale for selection of the models used for analysis of the data (lines 101-5) and would appreciate a little expansion on the suitability of those models, in broad terms - there is a lot of technical detail in the methods describing the models, which is very helpful, but a sentence or two on why these models were selected (and others rejected) would be helpful to guide the reader towards the argument the authors are making. In particular it would be helpful to state at the end of Section 1 (lines 107-116) how the predictions fit into the model design, and testing of the hypothesis.

In line 169, please describe what the acronym NDVI stands for.

In lines 258-61, there appear to be errors in the description of the data of Table 1 and Figure 2, possibly some text was repeated and not deleted.

Is Figure 3 describing only “Recently Burned”? Lines 296-7 seem to suggest this is the case.

What precisely do the covariate terms mean, in real terms, in Figure 3? For example, what is the significance of “severity squared”? How is it different in real terms from severity, and why is it being shown to the reader in this figure?

It is difficult to discern differences between different factors from key in the legends in some of the figures, e.g. Figure 4 - please consider changing the color transparency/contrast to allow the different curves to be discerned, or label the curves directly on the graph.

Figure S1.3 is mentioned in line 326, before the first mention of Figure S1.2, on line 340.

Conflicts:

I have no conflicts to report; I have not been involved with nor discussed this work with the author. I do not stand to gain or suffer financially or otherwise from this publication.

License:

This review is published under a CC-BY license.

Competing interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.