> PloS recruits it's Editors from suggestions made 
> by anyone who manages to publish in PLOS. 

I've not seen this in physics, so this may be a problem unique to the
smaller pool of people who might comment in bees and related areas.
What I've seen is a significant move away from the for-profit journals, and
toward the more open platforms like PLoS.
No one wants their work paywalled.

> And PLoS likes to play the pay to comment game....

The trend seems to be toward everything becoming, in essence, a "pre-print",
so the comments can "make or break" a paper.  There's nothing wrong with
that, as via comments, the truth rises to the top quicker, as a comment is
far easier to write up than a full "reply letter to the editors" or paper.

> I'm surprised that PLOS accepted such a poor M&M.

> if the bumblebees had been exposed to a bit 
> of daylight, that there would be no need to 
> install LEDs in the colonies.

In defense of the authors, they showed a clear effect, so they did not need
a complex "method" to show clear and compelling results.  And that near-IR
light source is 400 times as bright as what the sun puts out, so I do not
think sunlight would have any impact on the results.

Let's not dismiss it out of hand, even if the mechanisms at work may not yet
be clear to us.  It certainly caught my eye...

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