Peer Review History
Original SubmissionMay 18, 2022 |
---|
PONE-D-22-14466Decapod crustacean larval communities along the eastern Spanish Mediterranean coastPLOS ONE Dear Dr. CLARET, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. The reviewers feel this paper presents interesting data resulting from an intense sampling and classification effort, and deserve publication after minor revisions. The title is considered to be a bit showy and not exactly fitting the paper contents. Some methodological aspects need further clarification. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 07 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Antonio Medina Guerrero, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "This research was carried out under project CONECTA (CTM2014-54648-C2) funded by the Spanish Miniterio de Economía y Competitividad. MC benefited from a FPU2015 grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. " We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Dear authors, I find this paper interesting, not pretentious, well written and being the result of a large amount of work. The classification of marine larval organisms is arduous and capable people are lacking. I think this work merits publication in this journal after minor revision. Please find my comments below. Line 71. The meaning of GSAs is known to Mediterranean scientists, but other readers may not be familiar with this GFCM divisions Line 73. I would refer here to Figure 1. Line 76. There are some more works in the W Med, e.g. Pires et al.,2018. https://doi.org/10.12681/mms.2006 Line 87. I would move this table to the supplementary material, refer to Fig.1. Table 1 occupies a lot of space and the level of detail offered (Lat and Longs for example) are not needed "inmediately" Line 127-131. Besides a-priori analyses, it is always interesting to conduct a data-driven analysis (e.g. clustering/ordination methods ), without considering the three zones. in this way, you can extract spatial patterns that may not be related to your pre-conceptions. Note: I see that you later conduct NMDS.. Methods: Despite GAMS are widely used, in my view GLMs should be preferred (can use linear models that allow for curved responses) if you do not have a clear view of why your data may be non-linear in a particular way (specially if you have few data in some areas of your graph). In general, I miss the results (values) of the GAMS/NMDS analyses and a better explanation of those results. How good was this approach? Line 175. In general, in all tests I'd include the statistical test used, its value, etc., unless not required by the journal Line 178. These p values are very marginal, If the analysis was bayesian, probably you would not claim differences to be too credible. I'd be cautious with these interpretations. Later I saw you include one sentence on this in the Discussion, but still, you expand on these results. Line 190. On average Line 214. Log10 or Ln? You mention Log10 in the Methods Line 226. Again, p values tell not too much, including sample size, degrees of freedom and the test value is recommended. Line 226-229. I wonder if you are no missing some key predictive variables, such as sediment type where some adults dwell Line 251 "although followed...." that sentence is a bit difficult to understand Line 255. Do the samples from that study come from a different or the same survey? Reviewer #2: This work is the result of two intense efforts, the first of them in collecting a huge number of nektonic samples (at 101 stations) along the Iberian Mediterranean coast, and the second one in identifying 20,022 decapod larvae. This is an impressive task! Congratulations to the authors. I think that is a correct work respect to methods, treatment and analysis of data, and discussion of results. Anyway, I have some questions that I think that must be addressed by the authors before this manuscript be acceptable for publication. 1)The first question is related to the title and some sentences along the manuscript that from my point of view do not correspond with the real content of the work. I mean, as authors say at some point (lines 15-16), they “present the summer mesoscale larval distribution of several species of commercial interest”, as well as the objective of the work (lines 79-81): “to describe the summer community…”. But the title does not reflect this exactly, and it could create false expectations in the readers like myself. Therefore, I suggest adjusting the title to the actual content. 2) The second question refer to the methods for collecting. Authors used a neustonic sledge, with a flowmeter to calculate the volume of filtered water. But I miss some important data about the moment of the day for collection because we know that nekton composition is not the same during the day or in the night. There are significant variations in species composition and abundances. Therefore, I think that this is an important information to understand the results. As well as the period of time that the neustonic sledge was towed. I know that finally with the flowmeter you can compare samples taken in different periods of time (from few minutes to longer), but with longer periods the probability of collecting species with lower densities increase. Therefore, to help to understand the results for readers I suggest including this information in the Method section. 3) Respect to the area of study, authors selected three zones: Northern, Central, and Southern; but I cannot see the criterion for the limits of each one. According to figure 1, the limit between “Southern” and “Central” is not exactly the Ibiza Channel, and the limit between “Central” and “Northern” is not between Blanes and Palamos, why? Authors mention these two barriers in the Introduction (lines 66-78), so why they did not use this information to define the three zones? Instead, they define 3 zones with a clear different number of stations (Southern: 31, Central: 20, Northern: 50) and different distribution (density of stations at Northern zone clearly the highest). In the Northern zone (figure 1) is easy to see distribution of several sampling stations forming perpendicular lines to the coast line (radially), but not in the other two zones. I suggest to the authors to describe the criterion to stablish the 3 zones, and the distribution and density of stations, and how this could affect (or not) to the results and the analysis. 4) I know that is impossible to take samples at 101 stations along hundreds of miles simultaneity, but between the first samples and the last there are more than a month. This affects the results in two ways, different reproductive periods or pike of larval emission depending on the species could be not take into account, and these samples taken in this period do not represent “the “summer” distribution of…”. Summer start one month before starting the sampling and finish a month later. I know that authors mention this in the Discussion section (lines 258-312). But, for this reason some sentences must be corrected considering this. For example: lines 236-237, and 313-314, 5) I am not sure whether this is a rule of the journal, but in any case, I do not understand why all scientific names of species in the references are not in italics (see lines 338, 345, 346, 351, 354, 369, 378, 380, etc…)? The journal names are in italics, so is not a problem with this letter format. Other minor comments and corrections as follow: Line 10. Authors mention the taxa identified at the lowest level (shrimp, sensu lato), and those left at infraorder, but I miss two infraorder well-represented in marine waters, Astacidea and Polychelida, and my question is, are not mentioned because are not considered or because no larvae of these taxa were found? Absence of species is also an interesting information. For example, an Astacidea, like Nephrops norvegicus is also an commercial important species, and their larvae are extremely difficult to find in plankton samples. Lines 26-27. Probably this first sentence must be supported by a reference. Lines 50-51. “the eggs hatch directly into the first zoeal stage”. This is not right. There are exceptions, species with abbreviated development, or direct development. In these cases they can hatch as decapodite/megalopa (not zoea) or even as first crab/juvenile. Correct accordingly. Lines 53-65. In this paragraph I suggest citing works like: Brandao, M. C., Freire, A. S. & Burton, R. S. (2016) Estimating diversity of crabs (Decapoda: Brachyura) in a no-take marine protected area of the SW Atlantic coast through DNA barcoding of larvae. Syst. Biodivers. 14(3), 288–302. Marco-Herrero, E., Cuesta, J.A. & González-Gordillo, J.I. (2021) DNA barcoding allows identification of undescribed crab megalopas from the open sea. Scientific Reports 11:1. To show the use of molecular techniques in larval studies. Lines 66-78. In this paragraph I suggest to cting this work, if after read it you consider that allow to explain the barriers in the studied area: Ojeda, V., Serra, B., Lagares, C. et al. (2022) Interannual fluctuations in connectivity among crab populations (Liocarcinus depurator) along the Atlantic-Mediterranean transition. Scientific Reports, 12, 9797. Line 71. I suggest that first time cited in the text you mention it in full, for people that unknow the meaning of “GSA 6”. Line 73. “Carreton et al., in press”, I did not find this citation in references. I understand that papers in press can be cited and included in the reference list. Lines 66-78. Considering all the information of this paragraph, I suggest including these barriers in the figures 1, 2, 5 and 6. (see for example figure 1 in Ojeda et al. (2022)) Lines 104-106. Here, and in the paragraphs 191-193 and 289-294, authors explain that used molecular identification for three larvae. I miss a little bite of more information. What genes were used? COI? 16S? other? Authors say “following the method detailed by Carreton et al. (2019)”, in that work they used different primers, for different species, so I am not suggesting to include here all that information about primers and pcr protocols, but at least the gene or genes used, and the accession codes to Genbank (or BOLD, if COI) of the sequences obtained. Lines 154-156. As commented above, I suggest mentioning the remaining Infraorders (as Astacidea and Polychelida), and comment that larvae of these taxa where not found in your samples. The absence, or the negative result, is also an interesting data. Lines 156-157. In fig. 2A I can see high volume of zooplankton in the Central zone too, especially in the Ebro Delta area. Lines 204-207. In this analysis of non-commercial species, there are a comparison of Sergestidae (higher abundance) with the rest of taxa, but in the order of more to less represented authors forget to mention S. carinata (Fig. 5A). In this comparison, they use species (S. carinata, Alpheus glaber, Athanas nitescens), genus (Lysmata, Processa, Upogebia) and family level (Sergestidae), but in Table 3, we can see the level of identification of these taxa in families too. So, maybe could be all compared at this level? In some cases, for example S. carinata, is the same, but in other as Alpheidae would be the sum of Alpheus glaber and Athanas nitescens. It is just a suggestion. Lines 236-237. Insert in this sentence the temporal window: “summer”. Line 352. Include the name of the journal (PLOS ONE, I think), and volume. Line 387. Complete this reference with number of Leaflet and number of pages. Lines 401-406. I unknow the rules for references of this journal, but I do not understand the order of the three papers by Fuste. First 1987, second 1989 and third 1982. Line 404. Complete this reference with number of volume and number of pages. Line 406. Complete this reference with number of volume and number of pages. Lines 432-434. This is a PhD. thesis? I suggest completing the information, University? Number of pages? Published (printed or online), unpublished? Lines 442-444. This is also a PhD. Thesis? I suggest the same that above. Lines 455-456. This reference is confused. This is a chapter of book, so I miss data about editorial, country, pages, etc., and what about (Anger, 2001)?? Please, correct accordingly. Lines 480-483. Like above, this is a book chapter? I miss data. Lines 498-500. I think that the name of the journal must be included, and what mean (Lc)? ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ********** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 1 |
Summer decapod crustacean larval communities along the eastern Spanish Mediterranean coast PONE-D-22-14466R1 Dear Dr. CLARET, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Antonio Medina Guerrero, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: I have read the revised version and I think that it is clearly improved. Authors followed almost all suggestions, and I agree with their response in the few cases where they did not the suggested changes. ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ********** |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-22-14466R1 Summer decapod crustacean larval communities along the eastern Spanish Mediterranean coast Dear Dr. Company: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Antonio Medina Guerrero Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Open letter on the publication of peer review reports
PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.
We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.
Learn more at ASAPbio .