Carvalho, W.D., Rosalino, L.M., Dalponte, J.C., Santos, B., Adania, C.H., Esbérard, C.E.L., 2015, Can footprints of small and medium sized felids be distinguished in the field? Evidences from Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Tropical Conservation Science 8, 760–777.

First of all we would like to thank the authors of the “Letter to the Editor” (Giovanne Ambrosio Ferreira, Eduardo Nakano-Oliveira and Gelson Genaro) for their thorough analysis of our paper and for their comments. Throughout our paper we cited their study ([36] Ferreira, G.A., Nakano-Oliveira, E. and Genaro, G. 2014. Domestic cat predation on neotropical species in an insular Atlantic Forest remnant in southeastern Brazil. Wildlife Biology 20:167-175.) twice. One in the Introduction session, as an example of studies that relied on field guides for footprint identification since they have mentioned that: “…, the presence of footprints and scarifications and other indications that would help to characterize the excrements were also recorded and identified based on comparisons made using identification guides for species of wild felines of Brazil (Oliveira and Cassaro 2005)”. The second was in the discussion section where we again cite it as an example of studies that used “footprint identification from different field identification guides”, which can be derived from the sentence we mentioned above that is included in their study.

Having clarified this, and after thoroughly analyzing the entire paper again, we have to admit that one of the sentence included in the discussion may led readers to interpret what was mentioned inaccurately. Thus, in the discussion section, after giving some example of studies that used foot prints metrics available in field guides as criteria for felids identification, it should be written “However, some of the studies [33–34, 55–56] have not used other complementary approaches to confirm their results…” instead of what was stated (i.e. “However, none of the above-mentioned studies have used other complementary approaches to confirm their results…).

We apologize to Ferreira and colleagues for a less accurate reference to their study, but we assure to them, to the editor and to the journal that this was a situation exceptional and not repeatable. Moreover, we can guarantee that the robustness of the data collected and presented, it analytical procedure and data interpretation are above question.

Sincerely yours William Douglas de Carvalho^1,2,3, Luís Miguel Rosalino³, Júlio Cesar Dalponte⁴, Bárbara Santos¹, Cristina Harumi Adania¹ and Carlos Eduardo Lustosa Esbérard²